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HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE 

No. 36 



Editors: 

HERBERT FISHER, M.A., P.B.A. 
Prof. GILBERT MURRAY, Litt.D., 

LL.D., F.B.A. 
Prof. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A. 
Prof, WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A. 



THE HOME UKIVEESITY LIBEAEY 
OF MODEEIT KisrOWLEDGE 

l6mo cloth, 50 cents net, by mail 56 cents 

HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY 

Already Published 

j THE DAWN OF HISTORY . . . By J. L. Myres 

ROME By W. Warde FowLEB 

THE PAPACY AND MODERN 

TIMES By William Barry 

MEDIEVAL EUROPE By H. W. C. Davis 

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION . By Hilaire Belloc 
THE IRISH NATIONALITY . . By Mrs. J. R. Green 

CANADA By A. G. Bradley 

THE CIVIL WAR By Frederic L. Paxson 

HISTORY OF OUR TIME (i885- 

1911) ByC. P. GoocH 

POLAR EXPLORATION (with 

maps) By W. S. Bruce 

THE OPENING UP OF AFRICA By Sir H. H. Johnston 
THE CIVILIZATION OF CHINA By H. A. Giles 
A SHORT HISTORY OF WAR 

AND PEACE ByG. H. Perris 

MODERN GEOGRAPHY By Marion Newbigin 

Future Issues 

A SHORT HISTORY OF EUROPE By Herbert Fisher 

ANCIENT GREECE By Gilbert Murray 

THE REFORMATION By Principal Lindsay 

A SHORT HISTORY OF RUSSIA By Prof. Milyoukov 
PEOPLES AND PROBLEMS OF 

INDIA By Sir T. W. Holderness 

FRANCE OF TO-DAY By Gabriel Monod 

THE EVOLUTION OF CITIES . By Patrick Geddes 

ANCIENT EGYPT By F. L. Griffith 

THE COLONIAL PERIOD ... By Charles M. Andrews 
FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN By William MacDonald 
RECONSTRUCTION AND UNION 

(1865-1912) By Paul L. Ha WORTH 

LATIN AMERICA By W. R. Shepherd 



PEOPLES 



AND 



PROBLEMS OF INDIA 



BY 



SIR T. W. HOLDERNESS 



K.C.S.I. 




NEW YORK 
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

LONDON 
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE 






OCT 3 iun 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAOB 

I The Cottntry. . . , . • 7 

II Its History 35 

III The People 66 

rV The Caste System .... 86 

V Religions . • , . . . 106 

VI Economic Life . . . . .136 

VII The Government op British India . 157 

Vin The Native States .... 181 

IX Administrative Problems . . . 208 

X Political and Social Movements . . 233 

Bibliography 253 

Index 255 



PREFATORY NOTE 

The following pages were printed off before 
the announcement at the Delhi Coronation 
Durbar (December 12, 1911) of the decision 
of His Majesty's Government to transfer the 
seat of the Government of India from 
Calcutta to the ancient capital of Delhi, and 
simultaneously to make, in modification of 
the partition of 1905, extensive changes in 
the government of Bengal. The declared 
object of these measures is to give greater 
autonomy to provincial governments, to 
recognise provincial sentiment and aspira- 
tions, and to relieve the central government 
of direct responsibility for provincial affairs. 
These principles are discussed and their 
importance recognised in the present work. 



PEOPLES AND PROBLEMS 
OF INDIA 



CHAPTER I 

THE COUNTRY 

A COUNTRY makes its inhabitants in more 
senses than one. This is true of India. 

In the first place a country must be able 
to sustain inhabitants, or they will not 
exist. There is a natural limit to its popu- 
lation. At one extreme is the Sahara desert, 
at the other the Nile valley. In India both 
extremes are found. The native state of 
Jaisalmir in western Rajputana can barely 
support a population of under five persons 
to the square mile. In the Gangetic plain 
500 to the square mile is of common occurrence. 
We are speaking of course of purely agricul- 
tural tracts. Where manufactures exist which 
can be exchanged for food, the case is different. 

Again, a country may be said to make 
its inhabitants in that their faculties 
and dispositions are largely influenced by 
7 



8 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

its physical and climatic conditions. The 
statement that man is the product of his 
surroundings is qualified by the fact that race 
has a great resisting power. The qualities 
of race will often persist in the face of adverse 
circumstances. The many races that make 
up the population of India maintain their 
distinctive characters, though for centuries 
they have lived side by side. None the less 
India has stamped them with a common seal, 
and has wrought out a recognisable type 
amid a great profusion of species. 

Lastly, a country makes its inhabitants so 
far as it determines their political history. 
The fertility of a country may prove its 
ruin, if accompanied by a soft and languid 
climate which saps the energies and weakens 
the combative instincts of the inhabitants. 
Of this Egypt is an instructive example. It 
has passed from one conqueror to another 
until it has lost the consciousness of national 
life. India, like Egypt, has been the coveted 
prize of the strong. But unlike Egypt it has 
in the long run absorbed its invaders and 
maintained its own civilisation. It has been 
able to do this because its natural frontiers 
have protected it from invasion except at one 
or two points. These points are so distant 
from the centre that invasions of India always 
lost something of their first impetus before 
they could be pressed home. 



THE COUNTRY 9 

" India," as we use the word, denotes the 
whole of the sub-continent which is cut off 
by the Himalaya mountains from the rest 
of Asia. Its derivation is interesting. It 
comes from the Sanskrit " Sindhu " (literally 
" river " or " flood "), and this was the name 
given by the early Aryan invaders of India 
to the great river on which they settled when 
they entered the plains country from the 
highlands of central Asia. To-day this river 
is the Indus. To the Aryan settlers it was 
" the river " — ^the sign and symbol of their 
new possessions. With its great tributaries 
it is still the most important feature of 
northern India. The coming of the Aryans 
into India is distant three thousand or four 
thousand years, and we have no clear record of 
their settlement. But their sacrificial hymns 
are preserved in the Sanskrit Rig Veda, " the 
first word spoken by Aryan man," and thus we 
know that the Aryans were a branch of the 
Indo-European stock and spoke a language 
closely allied to the languages of Greeks, 
Romans, Celts and Germans. Their first 
settlements were confined to northern India. 
To them the new country was simply the 
land of the Indus. Their later hymns show 
that as they spread eastwards and southwards, 
expelling or enslaving dark-hued primitive 
races, their idea of the country expanded. 
They then knew it as the land of the Indus 



10 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

and the Ganges. We will not here pursue 
their later fortunes. The point of interest in 
this early glimpse of India is that we see it in 
the act of being invaded by hardy people from 
the north. This fact is imbedded in the name 
" India." The history of India is a repetition 
of this fact. 

" India " thus meant originally the great 
river ; then the region watered by that river 
(the Indus) and its tributaries. We may see 
in this the notion, natural in dry eastern 
countries, that it is water alone that makes 
land of value. This is strictly true of the 
greater part of India. Without the Indus 
and its streams the plains of northern India 
would be uncultivated and uninhabitable. 
The same truth is expressed in the name 
" Punjab." The province bearing this name 
which stretches from the Indus on the west 
to the Gangetic plain on the east is literally 
" the land of the five rivers." 

We may glance at another ancient word 
which is of much import to India. It is 
impossible to imagine the Indian continent 
without the Himalayan mountains. They 
were much in the minds of the early Aryan 
settlers. " Himalaya " in Sanskrit meant 
" the place of snow." As the rivers of 
northern India gave food and pasturage to the 
immigrants from central Asia, so the snowy 
rampart that closed them in on the north 



THE COUNTRY 11 

gave food to their imagination. They placed 
the seats of their gods in the Himalaya, and 
they saw in them the mysterious source of 
their beloved rivers. The ice-cave in which 
the Ganges rises among the high snows became 
to later fancy the matted locks of Siva, the 
great god of life and death. Other wild 
and fantastic legends of the same kind show 
how deeply the minds of the early Aryan 
settlers were impressed by the grandeur of 
the Himalaya. The instinct was a right 
one. It anticipated the reverence with which 
we with ampler knowledge regard these 
inaccessible peaks. In them are fashioned 
the rivers which give life to the plains of 
India. The melting of their snows in the 
early summer causes these rivers to rise and 
thus provides an unfailing supply of water 
for the great canals that irrigate the country. 
Later on in the year the Himalaya play 
another part. They intercept the vapour- 
laden winds as they blow across India from 
the equator, and compel them to discharge 
their burden in fertilising rain. The historian 
sees in the Himalaya a wall of seclusion which 
has kept Indian civilisation as a thing apart 
and given it a unique flavour. The statesman 
views them as the barrier between the warm 
and fertile plains of India and hungry prowlers 
without. The barrier, as will be seen, can 
be turned at either end. But for all that it 



12 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

is the strongest and most remarkable mountain 
barrier in the world. 

" Monsoon " is another word of vital import 
to India. It comes from an Arabian word 
meaning " times " or " seasons." A monsoon 
wind is a seasonal wind, that is, one that 
blows continuously from a certain quarter 
during a certain period of the year ; and a 
monsoon region is one in which the climate 
is entirely controlled by winds of this kind. 
India is such a region. It has well-defined 
seasons of rain and clear skies, and these 
depend upon conditions of atmosphere and 
temperature not m India itself, but in the 
Indian ocean and adjacent lands. Broadly 
speaking nearly the whoie rainlall of India is 
confined to about three or four months of the 
year. From Marcn to June the Indian 
continent heats up and the pressure of the air 
over the heated suriace becomes less than that 
over the Indian ocean. Similar conditions 
prevail in Africa. A strong mdraugnt is 
thus established in the land masses north of 
the equator, and currents of air laden with 
moisture from the soutnern seas pour across 
the line, and bring about the rainy season. 
In the greater part of India this season lasts 
from the middle of June to the middle or 
end of September. In southern India some- 
what different conditions prevail, and the 
rainfall is chiefly in the later months of the 



THE COUNTRY 13 

year. If the monsoon current is of normal 
strength and persistency, the harvests will 
be good and the cultivator will rejoice. If 
it is weak and short-lived there is drought 
and " famine." The monsoon therefore is 
the dominating fact in the Indian year. 
Not only does the monsoon current vary 
in strength from year to year, but its 
distribution in India itself is extremely 
unequal. It is a thing of twists and 
turns, very sensitive to local conditions. If 
it strikes hills it dissolves in sheets of rain, 
but over a flat country it passes without 
expending a shower. A large part of north- 
western India for Instance is practically rain- 
less — either desert or dependent on irrigation 
from the snow-led rivers. Bengal and Assam 
in the east are tracts of superabundant rain. 
There are other tracts wnere the rainfall is 
just sufficient ; and others where it is pre- 
carious and often deficient. 

The map of Asia shows India as a large 
irregular triangle projecting southwards into 
the Indian ocean. Relatively to the rest of 
Asia the sub-continent looks small. But it 
is larger than Europe without Russia and 
contains one-fifth of the human race. It is 
not one country, as we know countries in 
Europe, but many countries. Its southern 
extremity is within ten degrees of the equator. 
Its most northerly point is about the latitude 



14 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

of Lisbon. The two points are distant from 
each other nearly two thousand miles. From 
extreme east to extreme west along the 
northern boundary the distance is equally 
great. In so extensive a region there is room 
for many climates, and in fact India in this 
respect presents greater contrasts than do 
the countries of Europe. An Englishman 
who travels through Europe to southern 
Greece is struck by the variety of climates 
through which he passes. But he would 
be much more struck by the contrast which 
the Malabar coast with its beauty and tropical 
luxuriance presents to the treeless plains of 
the Punjab, or the hills and glades of central 
India to the rice fields and palm groves of 
lower Bengal. The difference is not merely 
in scenery but in every climatic condition. 
In Malabar there is the perpetual summer of 
the tropics with the heat and moisture of a 
forcing house. In the Punjab there are 
extremes of cold and heat. For most of the 
years its plains are brown and arid, scorched 
in summer with fiery winds like the blast of a 
furnace ; in winter they are clothed in a 
mantle of green crops, while the climate is 
that of a Riviera winter. In central India 
there are well-defined seasons of heat and 
cold with no great extremes. Heat and 
moisture predominate in Bengal and make it 
one of the dampest and greenest countries of 



THE COUNTRY 15 

the earth. Still greater contrasts could be 
found if the Himalayan region and the deserts 
of Sind were included in the account. The 
Himalaya themselves exhibit every gradation 
of cold and heat, of luxuriance and sterility, 
of loveliness and desolation. But enough has 
been said to make it clear that India is a 
continent, not a country, and a continent of 
infinite variety. 

What are the limits or boundaries of India ? 
We must distinguish between the natural 
limits of India, as determined by its moun- 
tains and rivers, and its political boundaries. 
By the latter we mean the limits of the British 
Indian Empire, as indicated by the red 
boundary line drawn round the Indian 
continent on the map of Asia. The political 
boundary obviously includes a good deal of 
country that is not Indian. On the extreme 
east the province of Burma is geographically 
part of China, and is parted from the Indian 
continent by a mass of mountains. On the 
extreme west the political boundary makes a 
wide bend beyond the Indus and takes in 
large tracts of mountainous country on the 
borders of Persia, Afghanistan and China. 
On the north the Himalaya seem at first sight 
to provide a clear frontier line. They look 
on a map like a continuous rampart : they 
suggest that India might stop where they 
rise from the plains. But a large scale map 



16 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

on examination shows that the Himalaya 
are not a single range of mountains but many 
ranges, and that the political boundary is 
laid far back in their recesses. The red line 
includes from east to west an average breadth 
of one hundred miles of the mountainous 
region of the Himalaya. It should also be 
noted that the Himalayan tract within the 
red boundary is shown in different colours. 
The greater part is coloured red. This means 
British territory. In the north-west angle 
a large area is coloured yellow. This is the 
" protected '* native state of Kashmir, whose 
ruler is under the suzerainty of, and owes 
allegiance to, the British Crown. In the 
central section a large area is coloured green. 
This is the native state of Nepal. It is not a 
" protected " state like Kashmir, and in all 
internal affairs enjoys complete independence. 
But it is bound by treaty to the British 
alliance, and in foreign policy it is within the 
British sphere of influence. 

Thus the political boundaries of India have 
been laid out on a generous scale. It is as if the 
owner of a large estate in an unsettled country 
had taken in on every side as much rough 
land as he thought was necessary for his 
privacy, and for keeping marauders off his fields 
and homestead. It is exactly what has hap- 
pened in the building up of the British Indian 
empire. The wide-flung political boundary of 



THE COUNTRY 17 

India marks the steps that have been taken to 
seize advantageous points or to put down 
troublesome neighbours. The acquisition of 
territory in Burma for instance was due to 
the invasion of the British province of Assam 
by the Burmese kings. Later acquisitions in 
Burma were in like manner provoked by the 
policy of the Burmese and by fear of French 
intrusion from the side of Tonquin. The 
same process on a still larger scale has created 
the present political frontier on the north-west 
side of India beyond the Indus. On this side 
India has always been exposed to raids and 
invasions. There are four or five routes 
through Afghanistan and the neighbouring 
mountainous country which from the earliest 
ages have been followed by invading hosts. 
For centuries an independent Afghanistan 
meant trouble to India. An adventurous 
chief who established himself at Kabul or at 
Ghazni had control of the passes into India, 
and could command the services of all the 
freebooters of Asia when he set out to invade 
it. The most powerful sovereigns of India 
have found it essential to hold the northern 
approaches among the mountains west of 
the Indus. When they lost these they lost 
the Indus valley and the western Punjab. 
The British rulers of India have followed the 
same law of self-preservation. From the 
Indus they have advanced their political 



18 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

boundary into the mountains beyond it. A 
part of these non-Indian lands is now included 
in British India. But a larger part is con- 
trolled by a system of protectorates, where 
British influence prevails but where the actual 
government is left to the tribes themselves. 
A still larger portion is left to the kingdom of 
Afghanistan, under an independent ruler 
seated at Kabul. But though independent, 
he receives a subsidy from the British Indian 
Government ; he is bound to act in alliance 
with it, and in external policy his territories 
are recognised as within the sphere of British 
influence. 

The political boundaries of the British 
Indian Empire thus illustrate on a very large 
scale the practice of " throwing out a line of 
frontier round a wide tract of unsettled 
country in order to exclude rivals." They 
include in consequence a great extent of 
country that is geographically speaking not 
Indian. 

The natural boundaries of India consist of 
sea and land. The sea boundary on the east 
and west calls for no description. But the 
land boundary on the northern face is intricate. 
The Himalaya, as has been already said, are 
not a well-defined mountain chain running 
across the country from sea to sea. They 
are a part of a great mountain region where 
range follows range, and where the water 



THE COUNTRY 19 

parting lies behind the central range of snows. 
The Himalayan mountains, which tower 
above the plains of India in a continuous line 
of snowy peaks, are but the wrinkled southern 
edge of the great Tibetan plateau. Their 
highest range is at a distance of eighty to a 
hundred mUes from the plains. Between it 
and the plains are minor ridges intersected 
by streams and valleys. Behind the snow-line 
is a deep depression or trough, in which 
west and east fed by glacial streams run 
rivers which eventually terminate in India. 
Westward runs the Indus, and eastward a 
river which in India becomes the Brahma- 
putra. Both rivers take their rise near the 
glacial lake of Mdnasarowar and the peak of 
Kailas, names among the most sacred of 
Hindu mythology. The Indus bursts into 
India at Attock, near the military station of 
Peshawar, after a journey of seven hundred 
miles in its rocky cradle in the mountains. 
The Brahmaputra enters Assam after a still 
longer course. The trough which thus conveys 
them to India in opposite directions is one of 
the most remarkable in the world. It has 
not been explored throughout its entire length. 
Portions only of its mighty gorges have been 
seen by human eyes. To the north of the 
trough is the table-land of Tibet, the most 
elevated region of the kind in the world. 
Its average elevation is from fifteen thousand 



20 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDLV 

to eighteen thousand feet above the sea — a 
height surpassing that of the loftiest mountains 
of Europe. Its width is from three hundred 
to four hundred miles. Geologists have shown 
that the Himalaya and the Tibetan plateau 
are essentially one formation, and are due to 
the same cause. In comparatively recent 
times as geological periods go this portion of 
the earth's surface was forced up by contrac- 
tion of the crust. The Indus-Brahmaputra 
trough is a mere crack or scratch in the 
surface of this vast elevated region. 

The Himalaya are contained between the 
Indus where it bends and enters India on the 
west, and the Brahmaputra where it makes 
a similar bend and enters India on the east. 
In their length of fifteen hundred miles there 
are three or four points where a passage into 
Tibet or China is possible. Through these 
high passes races of Mongolian origin have 
filtered into Himalayan valleys and made 
their homes there ; and during the summer 
months a certain amount of trade struggles 
through them. But to an invasion in force 
the Himalaya, as thus defined, are an im- 
passable obstacle. North and west of the 
Indus, however, the complete protection 
afforded by the Himalaya ceases. Their 
place is taken by other mountain ranges, 
stretching down to the Persian Gulf. These 
mountains are often as lofty and imposing 



THE COUNTRY 21 

as the Himalaya, but they are not so con- 
tinuous. They contain open tracts inhabited 
by hardy tribes, and they are traversed by 
several routes, which, though difficult, are 
quite practicable for large armies. They are 
really highlands belonging to Persia and 
Central Asia rather than to India. The 
distinctively Indian races stop at the east 
bank of the Indus, and geographically that 
river is the western limit of India. But a 
river is never a strong political frontier. 
It is not surprising that from the mountains 
beyond the Indus all the great invasions of 
India in times past have proceeded, and that 
this is still its vulnerable point. 

At the eastern end of the Himalaya, where 
the Brahmaputra, bends round and enters 
India, the feature noticed in the mountains 
west of the Indus is repeated. Between the 
Himalaya and the head of the Bay of Bengal 
the land frontier is formed by a new set of 
mountain ranges running from north to 
south. They seem on the map to be an 
extension of the Himalaya and an equally 
efficient barrier between India and the outer 
world. But they are not as protective as 
they look. There is no doubt that through 
them in ancient times large bodies of immi- 
grants passed into India from China, and in 
quite recent times they did not prevent a 
Burmese invasion and the occupation of an 



22 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

Indian province by Burmese kings. In the 
present province of eastern Bengal and Assam 
the population is largely Mongolian in type, 
and must originally have been recruited from 
China. Hitherto the eastern frontier of India 
proper has given the rulers of India no 
serious anxiety. But the position might 
be changed if China should in the future 
become an efficient military power like 
Japan. In that case the danger point might 
possibly be found on the frontier of Burma, 
our latest extra-Indian acquisition. 

This completes all that need be said about 
the natural boundaries of India. Internally 
the country falls into three great regions, the 
Himalayan region, the Indo-Gangetic plain, 
and the peninsula proper. 

The Himalaya have already been described 
in our survey of the external bounds of India. 
But the fact cannot be too firmly grasped 
that these mountains are not only an external 
boundary, but form within India an extensive 
alpine region, very much larger and containing 
a much greater population than Switzerland. 
The enchanting valley of Kashmir is the 
most famous and the largest of many similar 
valleys within the Himalaya. The Himalaya 
give to India her principal rivers, and through 
their influence on the rainfall they affect all 
the conditions of life in the plains above 
which they rise. They are the source not 



THE COUNTRY 23 

only of the Brahmaputra and the Indus and 
their tributaries, but also of the equally great 
river system of the Ganges. 

The Indo-Gangetic plain lies between the 
footwall of the Himalaya and the peninsula 
proper. The latter term needs explanation. 
Relatively to the Asiatic continent the whole 
of India may be regarded as a peninsula. 
But the term is more appropriately applied 
to the southern portion that is washed on 
either side by the sea. A line drawn hori- 
zontally on the map from Calcutta to Karachi 
cuts off this southern triangle from the 
extra-peninsular or continental part of India. 
Peninsular India or the Deccan (literally, the 
country to the south) is geologically distinct 
from the Indo-Gangetic plain and the Hima- 
laya. It is the remains of a former continent 
which stretched continuously to Africa in 
the space now occupied by the Indian Ocean. 
The rocks of which it is formed are among the 
oldest in the world and show no traces of 
having ever been submerged. In many parts 
they are overlaid by a sheet of black " trap " 
rock or basalt, which once flowed over them 
as molten lava. In the Deccan we are, 
therefore, in the first days of the world. 
We see land substantially as it existed before 
the beginnings of life. 

The Indo-Gangetic plain stretches without 
a break from the Indus on the west to the 



24 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

delta of the Ganges on the east, a distance 
of twelve hundred miles. When the world 
was still in the making and before the elevation 
of the Himalaya, the space now occupied 
by this plain was a sea. The southern shore 
of this sea was what is now peninsular India. 
With the rise of the Himalaya the sea dis- 
appeared, and the rivers draining the 
Himalaya flowed into the depression, bringing 
with them the silt which is now the soil of 
the plain. Tennyson speaks of the streams 

" that swift or slow 
Draw down aeonian hills and sow 
The dust of continents to be.'* 

The Indo-Gangetic plain is literally the 
dust of mountains — ^the product of river 
action through aeons of time. The process 
still goes on. The Indus on the west and 
the Ganges on the east are still building new 
land and pushing their deltas into the sea. 
Since Alexander the Great embarked his 
troops at the mouth of the Indus on his 
withdrawal from India, the whole coast line of 
Sind has altered. The surface of the present 
province of the Punjab is scored with aban- 
doned river-beds. The five great rivers of 
the Punjab have repeatedly changed their 
courses and their junctions with the Indus. 
One large river, which gave life and wealth 
to the desert wastes of Rajputana and Sind, 
has ceased to exist. Hindu mythology 



THE COUNTRY 25 

ascribed these convulsions, some of which 
were due to earthquakes, to the domestic 
dissensions of the gods. At such times the 
rivers and mountains were lightly flung about. 
Legend recounts that where the Jumna and 
Ganges meet at the modern city of Allahabad, 
they are Joined by an invisible third. It is 
the lost river of Sind, the victim of an 
Olympian brawl. Modern science offers a 
more rational if more prosaic explanation 
of physical changes in the universe. 

The Indo-Gangetic plain is in many respects 
the most important feature of the Indian 
continent. It contains more than half the 
total population of India, and four-fifths of 
its wealth. Geologically a single plain, its 
physical conditions are very diversified. The 
western or Indus half, except where its 
northern fringe skirts the Himalaya and 
draws moisture from them, is arid and more 
or less rainless. To the south it tails off in 
wastes, shown in the map as the " Thar " 
or Indian desert. At its best the Indus plain 
is a grey, treeless region. Save in the river 
valleys or in canal tracts the dull monotony 
of the formless plain is unbroken. But there 
is no fault to be found with the soil, and the 
magic wand of the irrigation engineer is now 
transforming these waste spaces into green 
cornfields and prosperous settlements. The 
northern fringe — if fringe is an adequate 



26 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

word for a tract varying from one hundred 
to two hundred miles in breadth — is fertile 
and habitable. For centuries it has served 
as the highway for invaders from the north. 
If we follow the road from Peshawur to 
Rawalpindi, Lahore, and onwards to Delhi, 
we are in the footsteps of every empire- 
builder who has conquered northern India. 
At Delhi we strike the Jumna river, the 
most westerly tributary of the Ganges, and 
we enter the Gangetic plain. The rivers now 
flow east. The fertile, alluvial plain broadens 
out. The country as we go east wears a 
more comely look. It is greener and better 
wooded ; closely settled and carefully tilled. 
Water is more abundant and nearer to the 
surface. The air has lost the dryness of the 
desert, and is softer and damper. We are 
now in Hindustan — " the place of the Hindus" 
as the Mohammedan historians called it ; 
the heart of ancient Indian civilisation ; the 
" middle-land " of the later Vedic hymns ; 
the core of the Mughal empire. Every step 
eastwards brings us nearer to the holy places 
and famous cities of Hinduism. Muttra, 
Hardwar, Ajudhia, Benares, Patna, Gya — • 
to mention a few only — are to the Hindu 
what Mecca or Baghdad is to the Musalman, 
Jerusalem or Rome to the Christian. Three 
or four hundred miles below Benares we 
reach the eastern limit of Hindustan. Imper- 



THE COUNTRY 27 

ceptibly it merges into Bengal. In Hindustan 
the average rainfall averages thirty to forty 
inches a year, increasing towards the east. 
In Bengal a rainfall of fifty to sixty inches 
is common, and in eastern Bengal this is 
exceeded. The air is now languorous and 
vapour-laden, the vegetation luxuriant and 
tropical. The firm, grey plain of wheat and 
millets and sugar-cane dotted with clumps of 
park-like trees gives place to rice swamps 
and bamboos, palm and plantain. The 
Ganges after its junction with the Brahma- 
putra becomes a sea. The whole country 
is now a network of creeks and streams. 
The boat takes the place of the bullock-cart, 
the waterways are the roads. In this torrid, 
steamy, prolific region life is easy, wants are 
few. It is the home of a vast and ever- 
increasing population. 

Assam, to the north of Bengal, resembles 
the latter in its heavy rainfall, its verdure, 
and luxuriant vegetation. It is also a land 
of hills, and where it abuts on the Himalaya 
ranges it shelters some of the most primitive 
and savage races of India. But its title to 
honour is the magnificent waterway of the 
Brahmaputra. The fertile and picturesque 
valley through which this river flows is the 
seat of the prosperous tea industry. A tangle 
of rough hills separates Assam from Burma. 
So intricate and numerous are the ranges that 



28 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

no highway, much less a railway, has yet been 
made to comiect the two provinces. Access to 
Burma from India is, therefore, by the sea. The 
difficult land frontier of Burma accounts for the 
complete contrast which that country presents 
to India proper in race, civilisation and religion. 
The term " Indo-China " best describes it. 
Northern Burma is a mountainous forest-clad 
region with noble streams and valleys of great 
beauty. The Irrawaddy far down its course 
to the fiats of lower Burma preserves the 
charm of a mountain-bred river, and is the 
tourist's joy. Its delta is a vast rice plain as 
fertile as that of the Nile. 

We may now retrace our steps to Hindustan. 
To the south of the Ganges the country loses 
its flat and alluvial character, and rises in 
a series of rough tablelands towards peninsular 
India. In many parts it is a mere mass of 
valleys and stony hills. In the fertile plains 
between the Ganges and the Himalaya man 
and his works are never out of sight. But 
these rough uplands to the south are thinly 
inhabited. They constitute a strong country, 
difficult to invade or hold ; and because of 
this they have befriended races and tribes 
which had no chance in the open plains 
against organised force. In the east the 
Chota Nagpur plateau shelters the Santals 
and other primitive tribes who to this day 
use the bow and arrow. To the west extend 



THE COUNTRY 29 

the two large central regions known as 
central India and Rajputana, which for the 
most part are parcelled out among native 
states. In central India the plateau country- 
is at its best. As it trends southwards to the 
Vindhya hUls it broadens out into rolling 
downs of great fertility. Here in old days 
was the famous kingdom of Malwa, long a 
centre of ancient Hindu civilisation. The 
splendour of its capital Ujjain was the 
favourite theme of Hindu poets. West of cen- 
tral India the hiQs and deserts of Rajputana 
stretch for leagues till they merge in the great 
Indian desert. Rajputana is the land of the 
Rajput clans, into which they were driven 
from the fertile plains of Hindustan by the 
Muhammadan armies. Here amid the hills 
and sandy wastes they founded new homes, 
and were never completely subjugated. In 
the extreme west, where the states of Jodhpur, 
Bikanir and Jaisalmir lie, the soil, says a local 
proverb, grows more spears than ears of corn. 
" One horn of the cow," says another proverb, 
alluding to the precariousness of the rainfall, 
" lies within the rainy zone and the other 
without." 

The Vindhya hills are the northern boundary 
of peninsular India or the Deccan. A con- 
fused mass of forest-clad hills, they bar the 
approaches to the central tablelands of the 
peninsula. In former times when the wood* 



30 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

lands were denser and the country roadless, 
a military expedition into southern India 
was a serious matter. So the Muhammadan 
conquerors of Hindustan found it, and it is 
easy to understand why the south had a 
separate history, separate dynasties and 
kingdoms, and was included for short and 
transitory periods only in the northern 
empire. 

The topography of the Deccan is altogether 
different from that of northern India. The 
vast plain that stretches from the Indus to 
Calcutta invited easy conquest and empire- 
building ; its fertile alluvial soil and unfailing 
rivers make it a hive of industry and the home 
of a dense population. The Deccan, as a 
whole, is a broken and rocky country. It lent 
itself to the establishment of separate states, 
and gave protection to the weak against 
the strong. Accordingly its history is ex- 
tremely confusing. It is a record of many 
contemporaneous dynasties, engaged in end- 
less wars of aggression or defence. 

The Deccan, or India south of the Vindhyas, 
may be described as a tableland of very 
irregular and broken surface, with a general 
slope from west to east. On either side it is 
buttressed by the hills known respectively 
as the western and eastern Ghats. Ghat 
literally means a flight of steps or landing 
stairs. The western Ghats are a formidable 



THE COUNTRY 81 

barrier between the strip of lowlands fringing 
the coast and the interior tableland. They 
extend in an unbroken line the whole length 
of the coast, and attain an average height of 
four thousand feet. Their influence on the 
climate of the peninsula is great, as they 
intercept and break the monsoon-clouds from 
the Indian ocean. Their western face and 
the low country at their base are drenched 
with torrential rain during the monsoon, 
while the plains behind are comparatively 
rainless and arid. Here is the home of the 
formidable Mahratta race, who found in the 
wild and difficult country of the Ghats a 
perfect base of operations against the Muham- 
madan armies. A glance at the map will 
show that the rivers of the Deccan take 
their rise in the western Ghats and following 
the general slope of the country flow in an 
easterly direction, and discharge themselves 
into the bay of Bengal. The eastern Ghats 
are an Hi-defined range of no great height, 
and to the south they recede from the coast, 
leaving room for wide stretches of fertile- 
lowlands. The ancient civilisation of southern 
India was centred in the east and south on 
the great rivers and the lowlands, and has 
left memorials of its greatness in many ruined 
capitals. The deltas of the Godaveri the 
Kishna and the Cauveri rivers are vast 
expanses of rice fields, and their prosperity is 



32 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

secured by canal irrigation systems rivalling 
that of the delta of lower Egypt. In the 
extreme south the Malabar and Tanjore 
districts are second to none in India in 
tropical luxuriance and fertility. 

If we look at a map showing the present 
political distribution of India south of the 
Vindhyas, two large tracts coloured yellow 
will be seen lying between the provinces 
of Bombay and Madras. These two tracts 
are respectively the native states of Hydera- 
bad and Mysore. In the extreme south there 
is a third but smaller yellow tract containing 
the states of Travancore and Cochin. These 
three tracts are instructive. The Dominions 
of the Nizam of Hyderabad, to use the official 
designation, mark the southern limits of the 
Mughal empire. Nizam meant viceroy, and 
the present ruler of Hyderabad is the lineal 
descendant of a Muhammadan noble who 
governed the Deccan on behalf of the Delhi 
emperor. Mysore, Travancore and Cochin 
are ancient Hindu states. Their existence 
tells us that the country south of the Kishna 
river, which bounds the Nizam's dominions 
on the south, is to this day the most Hindu 
portion of India. It has never, save for a 
short period during the anarchy of the eight- 
eenth century, been under Muhammadan rule. 
The great mass of the population are of 
the aboriginal Dravidian race, and speak 



THE COUNTRY 33 

Dravidian languages. There was no Aryan 
conquest, and though there was Aryan 
immigration there was no general diffusion 
of Aryan blood. The Brahmans of southern 
India, who represent Aryan culture and Aryan 
traditions, are a race apart. 

We have completed our survey of the 
Indian continent. It has shown us the extent 
and diversity of the countries included in the 
term India, and the numerous races which 
inhabit it. In the great alluvial plains of the 
north we found that the aboriginal races have 
been overborne by the Aryan and the Mu- 
hammadan invader. To the east and south 
these influences thin out as we leave the 
plains for the broken country of central India 
and the Deccan. In the extreme south we 
find that the aboriginal race and their lan- 
guages still predominate. We end our journey 
in the oldest corner of the continent. 

A word or two may be said about the 
present political divisions of India. The 
primary division is into British India and 
Native States. Of the Native States some 
account will be given in a later section. With 
few and unimportant exceptions they occupy 
the interior of the continent and have no sea- 
board. We see in this the special feature of 
the British settlement in India. It came by 
way of the sea and was made effective by a 
nation deriving its strength from its mastery 



34 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

of the ocean. British India is distributed 
into eight major and two minor provinces. 
The two latter — Baluchistan and the North- 
western Frontier Province — ^are really military 
outworks on the further side of the Indus river. 
Of the eight major provinces the three oldest 
are Madras, Bombay and Bengal. The others 
have been gradually formed by subdivision 
or through later acquisitions. With the 
exception of Burma no province represents a 
natural unit : that is to say, they do not 
stand for differences of race or language, or 
geographical distinctions. They are purely 
administrative divisions of territory. An 
Indian province is not what we mean by a 
nation, though it tends to create a provincial 
spirit, which is not far removed from the 
beginning of a national life. 



CHAPTER II 

ITS mSTORY 

T_iE history of India falls into three main 
divisions ; the Hindu period, the Muhammadan 
period, and the period of the establishment of 
European dominion. 

These are rough divisions, as the periods 
overlap and it is not possible to define them 
sharply or to assign dates to their beginning or 
ending. But they serve as a framework and 
they broadly indicate the current of the story 
of India. 

Each period marks the invasion of India 
by fresh races from colder climes, and the 
transfer of the country in whole or in part 
to new masters. Some persons may see in 
this the tragedy of India. But a more hopeful 
and a better view is to regard the past as the 
passage to and preparation for a higher 
civilisation and a better ordered political 
system than would have otherwise been 
attainable. 

As to dates the Hindu period begins in a 
remote and unchronicled antiquity. It opens 

B2 35 



36 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

with the migrations of the Aryans from the 
plains of Persia and central Asia into northern 
India, and their conquest of the aboriginal 
races. These events occupied a large space 
of time from 2000 B.C. onwards, but the first 
date which scholars have been able to fix 
approximately for any political event is 
600 B.C. The Muhammadan period may be 
taken to run from about a.d. 1000, when 
Moslem inroads began on a large scale, to 
about the middle of the eighteenth century, 
when Delhi slipped from the feeble hands of 
the last of the Mughal emperors. For the 
third period the battle of Plassey, June 23, 
1757, is a convenient date. That battle, 
in which Clive with nine hundred Europeans 
and two thousand sepoys routed the army of 
the Nawab of Bengal, is usually regarded as 
the beginning of British supremacy in India. 
The Hindu Period. — When we say that the 
Hindu period of Indian history opens with 
the settlement of Aryan tribes on the Indus 
and its branches, we do not mean that India 
had no earlier past. On the contrary it was 
inhabited by other races, and the history of the 
Aryans in India is that of the subjugation of 
these races. Something will be said about 
these races in a later section. Here it is 
sufficient to say that there is no record of the 
pre'Aryan days of India, and that our 
knowledge of India begins with the Vedic 



ITS HISTORY 3*r 

hymns. From these hymns, of which the 
earliest are in the collection named the Rig 
Veda, we can gather a good deal of informa- 
tion about the people who used them, and 
their social condition. They had already 
advanced a long way from the primitive state. 
They were in the agricultural stage, rejoicing in 
plough-lands, horses, cattle and pastures. The 
family was the unit of society, and the 
authority of the father supreme within it. 
" There were no temples, and no idols ; each 
patriarch of a family lighted the sacrificial fire 
on his own hearth, and offered milk and rice 
offerings or animals, or libations of the soma 
juice to the fire, and invoked the ' bright ' 
gods for blessings and health and wealth for 
himself and his children. Chiefs of tribes 
were kings, and had professional priests to 
perform sacrifices and utter hymns for them ; 
but there was no priestly caste and no royal 
caste. The people were free, enjoying the 
freedom which belongs to vigorous pas- 
toral and agricultural tribes." The late 
Mr. Romesh Chunder Dutt, from whose 
history of Civilisation in Ancient India 
this passage is taken, probably idealised the 
life of the early Aryan settlers in India. But 
we shall not be far wrong if we picture these 
tribal communities as not unlike the Celtic 
and Teutonic tribes from whom the nations 
of western Europe are descended. 



38 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

As the tribes spread eastward through 
and beyond the " land of the five rivers," they 
came in contact with the aboriginal races, 
and from this point the story of India begins. 
Essentially it is the story of the gradual pene- 
tration of the Aryan tribes into countries 
already occupied by other races, and of their 
intermixture with these races in varying 
degrees. As will be seen later on, the caste 
and religious system of India is the result of 
this imperfect fusion. It seems probable 
that the Aryan settlements in the Punjab 
were made with small intermixture of race, 
as there is little aboriginal blood discernible 
in that province to-day. The Sutlej nver 
for some time must have been their frontier. 
Beyond it the land was possessed by " fiends " 
or " black-skins," as they are termed in the 
hymns. With libations poured over the 
sacrificial fire the gods are asked to give 
victory over these to the " noble " or " Aryan " 
men (the word has the double meaning). 
The "colour" distinction thus came on the 
stage very early. As the original mean- 
ing of the Sanskrit word " caste " is 
" colour," the origin of this famous institution 
is clear. 

The advance of the Aryan tribes from the 
Punjab to the Gangetic plain and their 
conquest of the country between the Himalaya 
and the Vindhya mountains must have 



ITS HISTORY 39 

occupied some centuries. The fact is vaguely 
indicated in the changed geography of the 
later Vedas, which now refer to the country 
between the Ganges and the Jumna ; and it 
also appears in the recognition given to the 
caste system in these later books. But we 
are left to conjecture the actual stages of 
the migration. What seems certain is that 
as the Aryan settlers went east, they took 
wives from the short dark races whose lands 
they had seized, and whom they had made 
serfs and domestic drudges. Some such ex- 
planation is required to account for the change 
in physique, type and language of the popula- 
tion east of the Punjab ; and it is implied in 
the later Vedas, and in the religious books 
called Brahmanas which were composed at this 
time. Under priestly guidance the men of 
Aryan blood became the " twice-born " classes 
— the Kshattriya or warrior class, the Brah- 
man or priest, the Vaisya or husbandman ; 
while a fourth class, the Sudra, was constituted 
for the aborigines and half-bloods. The 
Sudra had no share in the sacrificial worship 
which the Brahmans conducted. His duty 
was defined to be to serve meekly the other 
classes. 

Society while remaining tribal in the lands 
between the Ganges and the Jumna became 
also territorial. The clansmen held their 
lands in family groups, and the head of the 



40 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

clan became also its territorial chief or 
raja, with a right to receive tithe of the 
produce of the land. Outside the cultivating 
group or brotherhood, men of Sudra caste 
performed various offices for the community, 
and had their allotted share of the grain heap. 
In essentials this is the village system to-day in 
northern India. There were wars among the 
tribes and grouping of tribes under leaders. 
One great war was celebrated in later ages in 
a vast poem known as the Mahabharata. 
It is full of fabulous incidents and heavenly 
machinery. The war and the poem are 
respectively the Indian equivalents of the 
Trojan war and the Iliad. There is another 
vast epic, the Ramayana, or the adventures of 
Prince Rama, of about the same period. 
To this day these ancient poems, reset in 
modern vernaculars, delight millions of Indian 
peasants. 

In peninsular India to the south of the 
Vindhya mountains the spread of Aryan 
civilisation was slow. The races there, which 
are known under the general term Dra vidian, 
were powerful and civilised communities. 
Here it was less a case of conquest than of 
gradual diffusion of Aryan leaders and Aryan 
social and religious ideas. Some Aryan states 
were founded, and Brahmanical doctrines and 
the Brahman priesthood became supreme. 
But to this day the mass of the people in 



ITS HISTORY 41 

southern India show little trace of Aryan 
blood and speak non-Aryan languages. 

About 1000 B.C. the tribal and territorial 
chief-ships in the Gangetic plain began to 
give place to larger states. How the change 
came about we do not know, but probably the 
feuds of the clans gave openings to ambitious 
and successful chiefs to found kingdoms. 
The tribal system with its territorial rajas 
was not destroyed, but it was constantly 
overborne. When Alexander the Great in- 
vaded India in 326 B.C. he found independent 
tribes in parts of the country and powerful 
kingdoms elsewhere. The Indian monarch 
Porus, whom he defeated at the passage of 
the Jhelum, had a large array of horse, foot, 
chariots and war-elephants. There were 
reports of a still larger kingdom called Magadha 
in the Gangetic piain. Its capital was on the 
site of the present city of Patna. Twenty-five 
years later this kingdom grew into an Indian 
empire, which stretched from sea to sea, and 
extended beyond the Afghan mountains to the 
confines of Persia. The founder was Chand- 
ragupta Mauriya, and the empire he founded 
lasted nearly one hundred and fifty years. 
At its zenith it was the paramount power 
throughout northern India and in the greater 
part of southern India. In magnitude it 
must have been as extensive as the present 
Indian dominions of the Crown, 



42 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

The Mauriyan empire (320-180 B.C.) is 
interesting for two reasons. It produced the 
famous emperor-monk Asoka, and it was the 
forerunner and type of similar attempts to 
found a universal empire in India. Asoka is 
known to us through his edicts on pillars 
and rocks, enjoining on his subjects the obser- 
vance of the moral law taught by Gautama 
Buddha two hundred and fifty years before. 
Through Asoka's efforts Buddhism became the 
official religion of India for several centuries, 
and was carried to China and Ceylon. Asoka 
is one of the great figures in Indian history. 
In his piety and in his zeal he is the Indian 
Alfred the Great. 

The sudden appearance of a great military 
empire in India in the third century B.C. 
excites surprise. We are tempted to ask 
whence came the idea and the ground plan. 
It is a reasonable conjecture that the idea 
and the plan were borrowed from Persia. 
We have a minute description of Chand- 
ragupta's court and administration from the 
Greek ambassador, Megasthenes, who resided 
there for a time. His account of the barbaric 
splendour of the court, of the monarch's 
state and female guards when he went abroad, 
of his huge standing army, of the division 
of the empire into provinces, of the inspectors 
or newsagents who reported on the action of 
the provincial governors to the king — all these 



ITS HISTORY 43 

are features of the Persian monarchy. The 
Persian empire, before its overthrow by 
Alexander, was the great fact in the East. 
It dominated all men's minds by its magni- 
tude. Its elaborate and highly centralised 
system was the last word of the East on 
the art of government. It rested on three 
principles : the kingly power with military 
force at its command ; a host of trained civil 
officials ; and strict control from the centre. 
" It erred perhaps," says a recent writer, 
" on the side of centralisation ; but then the 
East does not understand, and never has 
understood, anything but centralisation in 
government." And he makes a remark 
which is as applicable to Indian as to Persian 
empires, that " it was at the centre of the 
empire, in the reigning family itself, that the 
decay set in which corrupted the whole." 
This dazzling Persian model was the envy and 
aim of every successful military adventurer. 
It was familiar to India, as a large part 
of the north-west of India had before 
Alexander's conquests been annexed by the 
Persian kings. It is thus not surprising 
that a great military empire should have been 
formed in India in the years 300-200 B.C. 
in close imitation of the Persian system. 

When the Mauriyan empire fell there was 
confusion for several centuries. Central Asia 
found the passes into India open and made use 



44 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

of the opportunity. Tribes of Scythians 
passed down the Indus valley and into the 
western Punjab, and founded principalities 
which lasted many years. A powerful Turkish 
dynasty, known as the Kushan Kings, 
established themselves in Afghanistan during 
the first three centuries of our era, and con- 
quered northern India as far east as Benares. 
The Turkish race has always shown a readiness 
to accept the culture and religions of more 
civilised nations, and this trait is very marked 
in these Kushan kings. From India they 
accepted Buddhism, but they added elements 
of Brahmanism, and placed Buddha among 
the great gods of Hindu mythology. On 
their coins they used the Greek alphabet 
to express Indian royal titles, and Greek 
influence is manifest in the remarkable series of 
sculptures which they left behind them in the 
country about Peshawar. The Gandhara 
sculptures, as they are called, are concerned 
with the adoration of Buddha, and with 
traditional incidents in his life and death ; 
and these purely Indian ideas are expressed 
under unmistakably Greek forms. Sculp- 
tures of this type have been found in the 
Gangetic plain, and are one of many proofs 
of the extent to which India from earliest 
times has been under foreign influences. 

The fourth and fifth centuries of our era are 
justly regarded as the golden age of Hinduism. 



ITS HISTORY 45 

The Aryan clans in the Gangetic plain were 
again brought together under a strong and 
vigorous monarchy, and the political unity 
of India was again nearly attained. The 
Gupta kings, as they were called from their 
tribal name, revived the glories of the ancient 
kingdom of Magadha, and for one hundred 
and fifty years held undisputed sway in 
upper India and beyond. We have a pleasing 
picture of India in these days from the journal 
of a pious Buddhist pilgrim from China. 
He found a peaceful and contented population 
under a lenient and paternal government. He 
was impressed by the mildness of the criminal 
law, by the freedom of travel permitted to all, 
and by the numerous signs of wealth and 
prosperity. This picture is confirmed by 
other evidence. There was progress not 
only in material wealth, but in architecture 
and letters. In religion Brahmanism, that is 
to say the sacrificial worship of Siva Vishnu 
and other Hindu deities, the doctrine of 
transmigration of souls, the social pre-eminence 
and sanctity of Brahmans, gained ground on 
and finally supplanted Buddhism. Buddhism 
had become formal and ceremonial without 
becoming popular. It had lost its first force 
as a way of life, as a solution of the riddle of 
existence. It was trivial and tedious, exalt- 
ing the monastic habit and visiting with 
severe penalties the taking of animal, even 



46 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

insect, life. It was no match for the new 
Brahmanism, which, departing from the 
" bright " nature deities and the simple 
worship of the Vedic hymns, laid itself out 
to pander to the terrors and the appetite for 
the marvellous of primitive man. It peopled 
the universe with fierce and terrible gods 
and goddesses, and invented monstrous and 
blood-curdling legends about its creation and 
its future. It borrowed from the aboriginal 
races their darkest myths, their grossest 
superstitions, their most dreaded and degraded 
deities ; and it compounded these into the 
most fantastic and bewildering system of 
theology and metaphysics that the world 
has ever known. This process went on long 
after the Gupta age, but its beginnings date 
from it. 

Even in the golden age of the Guptas India 
could not shake off her fate. Political unity 
was attained only to vanish. This time the 
blow was delivered by a new enemy. Early 
in the fifth century a terrible race, the Huns, 
under pressure of war or famine, moved 
eastwards and westwards from the central 
table-land of Asia. One horde burst like a 
tempest on Europe, producing Attila, the 
" scourge of God." The other overwhelmed 
India. The Gupta empire went down in the 
storm about a.d. 480. After that event 
prolonged darkness falls upon India. It 



ITS HISTORY 47 

lifts for a few years in the seventh century. 
By that time the Huns had been absorbed 
or broken into petty kingships, and we have 
accounts of the rise of another Hindu empire 
m northern India with Kananj (now a desolate 
site not far from Cawnpur) as its capital. But 
it speedily broke up, and with it went the last 
constructive effort of Hinduism in upper India. 
Henceforth neither in upper nor in southern 
India was there any successful attempt to 
reach political unity or to found permanent 
nation-states. In fact, as time went on, the 
forces making for disintegration and anarchy 
multiplied and increased in strength. 

One of the signs of this is the rise of Rajput 
kingdoms and chiefships. The internal feuds 
and migrations of the great Rajput clans 
make up the confused and fragmentary 
history of the centuries between the fall of 
the Gupta empire and the coming of the 
Muhammadans. We find them established 
in political power not only in what is now 
central India and Rajputana but also through- 
out the Punjab and the Gangetic plain. We 
do not exactly know how the Rajput clan 
grew out of the Aryan family. When the 
Rajputs first appear in history, they are 
powerful tribal groups, occupying more or less 
extensive tracts of country, and claiming 
descent from the sun or moon or from some 
mythical ancestor of princely rank. They 



48 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

were constantly engaged in internal feuds, 
and in efforts to increase their tribal lands at 
the expense of their neighbours. The 
disappearance of the Gupta empire and the 
confusion caused by the irruption of the Huns 
gave an opportunity to the most powerful 
clans to form independent kingdoms. We 
find accordingly in the tenth century Rajput 
houses ruling not only in Rajputana where 
they exist to-day, but in all the great cities 
of northern and western India. The Rajputs 
had, as they still have, the virtues and the 
weaknesses of clansmen. They were brave 
and chivalrous ; aevoted to their clan and 
chief. But beyond their chief their loyalty 
did not go. The chiefs might temporarily 
combine against an external enemy ; but 
their family pride and jealous temper made 
permanent union impossible. These defects 
were fatal to the Hindu cause when the wave 
of Moslem invasion broke over the country. 

The Muhammadan Period, — It would be 
idle to speculate as to what the future ot India 
would have been, had there been no Mosleni 
conquest. When the nomad races of central 
Asia embraced the creed of Islam, the invasion 
and subjugation of India became a certainty. 
The Muhammadan religion gave to these wild 
races precisely the stimulus, the ardour and 
the bond of unity that the enterprise required. 
They became a brotherhood of believers, the 



ITS HISTORY 49 

elect of God, whose mission it was to win 
the lands and the goods of the heathen by 
the sword, and to establish Islam throughout 
the world. A spirit of adventure and religious 
zeal made them irresistible against the 
suspicious and divided Indian races. What 
they lacked in numbers was more than made 
up in solidarity of purpose and fiery zeal. 
Moreover India was a rich prey. Its wealth 
to the hungry nomads of the steppes seemed 
fabulous. It attracted to the ranks of the 
invaders every bold and needy soldier of 
fortune in Asia. The plunder of India was a 
magnet that never ceased to attract so long as 
the passes leading down to the plains could 
be forced. No sooner had one set of invaders 
established themselves in the rich centres of 
India than they were called on to defend their 
new possessions against fresh hordes from the 
north. For five hundred years, reckoning 
from A.D. 1000, successive hosts of fierce and 
greedy Turks, Afghans, and Mongols trod 
upon one another's heels and fought for 
mastery in India. At the end of that time, 
Babar the Turk founded in 1526 the Mughal 
empire ; thenceforward for two hundred 
years the passes into India were closed and in 
the keeping of his capable successors. 

The subjugation of India by Moslem invaders 
was thus a gradual and protracted affair. 
The first comers were Arabs, who founded 



50 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

dynasties in Sind and Multan as early as 800. 
But their conquests did not extend and had 
merely a local effect. About 1000 the terror 
came. By that time the Tartar races had 
been brought into the fold of Islam, and the 
Turks, the most capable of these races, had 
started on the career which in the west ended 
in their establishment at Constantinople. A 
Turkish chieftain founded a small kingdom 
at Ghazni in the heart of the Afghan hills. 
In 997 his son Mahmud descended upon India. 
His title " the Idol-breaker " describes the 
man. Year by year he swept over the plains 
of India, capturing cities and castles, throwing 
down idols and temples, slaughtering the 
heathen and proclaiming the faith of Muham- 
mad. Each year he returned with vast spoils 
to Ghazni, which he enriched until it became 
the wonder of the East. The Punjab he 
annexed, and under his descendants it became 
a Muhammadan kingdom. In course of time 
the kingdom of Ghazni was swallowed up by 
the neighbouring and kindred state of Ghor, 
which produced in Muhammad Ghori a zealot 
of the same type and temper as Mahmud the 
" Idol-breaker." Like Mahmud he had no 
wish to establish himself in India, and preferred 
his mountain home. But for thirty years 
(1175-1206) he raided India as the land of the 
infidel, carrying his banners as far as Bengal 
and overwhelming the Rajput chivalry in 



ITS HISTORY 51 

battle. Returning from one of these raids 
he was slain on the banks of the Indus. His 
Indian possessions passed into the hands of 
his ablest general, a slave who, in Turkish 
fashion, had been raised to supreme command. 
India now saw a Muhammadan king estab- 
lished at Delhi. The dynasty thus founded 
was known as the Slave Kings. 

We may therefore take 1206 as the date 
of the permanent establishment of the 
Muhammadan predominance in India. At 
first this predominance was confined to 
northern India, with Delhi as the centre. The 
Slave Kings were merely successful conquerors, 
and when they ceased to be strong and 
capable they made way for others. Turks, 
Afghans and Mongols jostled each other for 
lands, retainers and power. There were 
constant rebellions and murders, and the 
throne of Delhi repeatedly changed hands 
by force or fraud. Five dynasties and 
thirty-four kings followed each other in the 
course of three hundred years. Other adven- 
turers carved out kingdoms for themselves 
both in northern India and south of the 
Narbada. The Rajput clans withdrew from 
the central plain of Hindustan to the hills 
and the desert, where they stubbornly kept 
the Muhammadans at bay. In the Muhamma- 
dan kingdoms Hinduism, though prostrate, 
was still alive and conscious. The Hindus 



62 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

vastly predominated in numbers, in intellect, 
and in the arts of peace, and the Muhamma- 
dans were as a camp of rude armed men, 
dependent upon the inhabitants of the country 
for the requirements of civil life. The con- 
querors and the conquered never completely 
fused, but they came in time to know each other 
better, and the former found the latter too 
useful to think of exterminating them, if that 
had been possible. Converts continued to be 
added to the faith, but ordinarily the induce- 
ments were pacific. The wives of the 
conquerors were often of Indian blood, and 
the Indian Musulman was no longer pure 
Turk or Afghan. Save for creed he was often 
of the soil. The spell of India had begun to 
work. By the end of the sixteenth century the 
Delhi kingdom was distracted and effete, 
and the other Moslem kingdoms were not in 
much better case. Once more was India ripe 
for the spoiler's hand. The spoiler appeared 
in Babar, the founder of the Mughal empire. 

Babar, though called the " Mughal " or 
" Mongol," was really a Turk. He belonged 
to the great house of Timur. After many 
adventures, which he recounts in his memoirs, 
he possessed himself of the kingdom of Kabul. 
From that spring-board in 1526 he descended 
upon India. Two battles — one with the 
Muhammadan rulers of Delhi and another 
against the combined forces of the Rajput 



ITS HISTORY 53 

clans — won him the whole of northern India. 
But for him India had no charms, save its 
wealth. " Hindustan," he says in his memoirs, 
"is a country that has few pleasures to 
recommend it. The country and towns are 
extremely ugly. The people are not hand- 
some. The chief excellency of Hindustan 
is that it is a big country with plenty of gold 
and silver." He was busy collecting gold 
and silver and remitting it to his Kabul home 
when he died in his garden-palace at Agra in 
1530. 

The Mughal empire that Babar founded 
was of the ordinary type of Asiatic despotisms. 
It was irresponsible personal government. 
For India it meant the substitution of a new 
set of conquerors for those already in occupa- 
tion. But the new comers brought with 
them the vigour of the north — ^they came 
from the plains of the Oxus beyond the Kabul 
hills — and they drew an unlimited supply 
of recruits from the finest fighting races of 
Asia. In physical strength and hardihood 
they were like the Norsemen and Normans of 
Europe. Babar swam every river that he 
crossed on his road to Delhi. The hardest 
march through the winter snows of Kabul 
left him vivacious and untired. Notwith- 
standing the enervating climate of India and 
the luxury and dissipation of the Mughal 
court his successors to the sixth generation 



54 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

were all men of masculine fibre and vigorous 
intelligence. They were no barbarians, though 
the Tartar strain was seen in their anger and 
their punishments. They were read in the 
literature of Persia, and their fine taste is 
seen in the splendid buildings of Agra and 
Delhi. With the one exception of the em- 
peror Aurangzeb they were not bigots. The 
creed of Islam sat lightly on them. The 
greatest of them, the emperor Akbar, was 
greatly drawn to Hindu mysticism, and tried 
to found a common religion for men of every 
race and creed, with himself as high priest. 
The others, Aurangzeb excepted, were content 
to leave the infidel to his idols, so long as he 
paid his taxes and gave no trouble. The 
empire rested on a truce between the 
religion of the conquering minority and 
that of the conquered majority. The policy 
of toleration was devised by the emperor 
Akbar, who sealed it by marrying a Rajput 
princess and by admitting the Rajput 
chiefs to high office. His successors, till 
Aurangzeb, who were half -Raj puts by blood, 
had the good sense to maintain it. Aurang- 
zeb, whose mother was a Persian lady, was a 
reversion to the strictest and most intolerant 
form of Islam. He was as strong and capable 
as any of his race, but in him their great 
qualities vrere misdirected. He spent himself 
and his empire in vain efforts to stamp 



ITS HISTORY 55 

out Hinduism. He alienated the Rajputs 
who had now become the chief military prop 
of the throne, and he kindled in the Mahratta 
peasantry of southern India a racial hatred 
that gathered them for a time almost into a 
nation. There is no greater tragedy in Indian 
history than the exhaustion and swift fall of 
the empire which his misguided policy brought 
about. 

From the invasion of Babar to the death of 
Aurangzeb (1707) was a period of one hundred 
and eighty years. During this time the empire 
remained, as it began, a rule of foreigners. 
Though Rajputs were taken into the military 
service of the state and Hindu scribes and 
financiers employed in civil offices, the 
administration was essentially foreign and 
Muhammadan. The country was parcelled out 
into military commands, and the commanders 
imported great numbers of men from beyond 
the mountains. In this way Muhammadan 
supremacy was established, the Muhammadan 
population grew, and to this day the effects are 
seen in the distribution of the Indian popula- 
tion into two great camps, as it were, divided 
by religion, by traditions of government, and 
to a large extent by nationality. 

The fall of the empire was brought about, 
as has been said, by the rise of the Mahrattas. 
The Mahrattas were a rough and turbulent 
Hindu folk, inhabiting the difficult and broken 



56 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

country of the western Ghats and the Deecan 
table-land. It was Aurangzeb's ambition 
to conquer their overlords, the Muhamma- 
dan kings of the Deecan. In the long 
warfare that resulted in the destruction 
of these kingdoms, the Mahrattas found 
their opportunity. They became freebooting 
companies under daring captains. They grew 
in strength, defied the Mughal armies, wasting 
the country, cutting off supplies and stragglers, 
and everywhere levying tribute. On Aurang- 
zeb's death the empire fell to pieces, and in the 
general anarchy the Mahrattas for a few 
years became the strongest power in India. 
From pillage their leaders, under the guidance 
of astute Brahman councillors who became 
hereditary ministers under the title of Peshwa, 
now soared to dreams of empire. But they 
forgot one thing. The fall of the Mughal empire 
had opened the passes leading into India. 
A Persian army desolated the Punjab and 
sacked Delhi, and after the Persian an Afghan 
host swept down from Kabul and seized the 
imperial city. Baulked of their prey, un- 
willing to leave it, yet afraid to strike, 
the Mahrattas entrenched themselves on the 
famous plain of Pannipat. With retreat 
cut off and starvation in sight, they were 
forced to give battle to the Afghans (1761). 
In the rout which followed their only real 
chance of an Indian empire vanished. They 



ITS HISTORY £7 

withdrew in hot haste to the Deccan ; and 
when after some years they ventured to return 
to northern India, a new power had arisen, 
which was destined to wrest from them the 
broken dominion of the Mughals. 

The British Period. — The beginnings of 
British rule in India date from 1600, when 
the East India Company was founded in 
London. It was a company of merchants for 
trade with the East Indies. It established 
trading stations, or " factories " as they were 
called, at various places on the Indian coasts 
with the permission of the Mughal government. 
There it found rivals in the Portuguese, the 
Dutch, and finally the French. Space will not 
permit us to trace the successive steps by which 
the English Company overcame these rivals, 
and from being a trading association became 
a political power. But speaking generally the 
causes were two : the superior sea-power of 
England in its international struggles with 
France and other nations ; and the misrule 
and anarchy everywhere existing in India on 
the collapse of the Mughal empire. To the 
first cause it was due that the Company's 
severe struggle with the French in Madras 
during the first half of the eighteenth century 
terminated in its favour ; the French lost the 
command of the sea, and with it the routes to 
India. The second made it necessary for the 
Company to protect its settlements against 



58 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

the disorderly native governments which 
were scrambling for power. To do this it 
maintained European troops and raised native 
levies. In 1756 an upstart Nawab of Bengal 
drove the Company out of Calcutta and 
brought about the death of one hundred and 
twenty-three European men and women in 
the " black hole. " The Company r et al iat ed by 
routing the Nawab on the field of Plassey, 
an^ setting up in his place another and more 
amenable potentate. From this point further 
advance was easy and inevitable. In 1764 
the Company came into collision with the 
kingdom of Oudh, another fragment of the 
shattered Mughal empire. The Nawab of 
Oudh was badly beaten at the battle of Buxar. 
The battle had important consequences. The 
fugitive Mughal emperor sought the Com- 
pany's protection, and in return assigned to it 
the administration of the great and rich 
province of Bengal. The Company was now 
definitely launched on a political career. 

From Plassey to the Indian mutiny there 
was an interval of exactly one hundred years. 
The first fifty years were the most critical, and 
saw the greatest changes in the fortunes and 
position of the Company, and in the political 
map of India. As the result of incessant 
wars it became the paramount power in India. 
In the process it was transformed from a 
trading into a governing corporation. Its 



ITS HISTORY 59 

affairs were constantxy before Parliament. 
In the end it was Drought under the indirect 
control of the Crown ; and ils responsibilities 
and powers, and the responsibilities and powers 
of its servants, were strictly defined by Acts 
of Parliament. As will be explained in 
another section, Pitt's Act of 1784 established a 
system ot double government. The Company 
continued to appoint the Governor-General 
and nis council : but the home government 
issued orders to him, directed his policy, 
and couxd recall him. The ministry of the 
day became responsible for what was done 
m India. This immensely strengthened the 
position of tne Governor-General. If his 
conduct was assailed, tJie pontical party in 
power was practically bound to stand by him. 
Clive and Warren Hastings might be censured 
by Parliament without the credit of the 
ministry being affected. The Marquis of 
Wellesley, who governed India under the new 
system, did more high-handed things than 
Hastings with less excuse : yet his conduct 
was never seriousiy challenged. 

To return to the course of affairs in India. 
For many years alter Plassey the Company 
had a hard struggle tor existence in the anarchy 
m which the country was » engulf ed. - Every- 
where predatory leaders, military adven- 
turers, and ex-ofiiciais of the old Mughal empire 
were scrambling tor kingdoms and plunder. 



60 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

enlisting large armies of mercenaries, and 
providing employment for them in annual 
campaigns. Of these competitors the most 
formidable were the Mahrattas. It was the 
Company's policy to play the others against 
the Mahrattas, and its alliances and wars 
were mostly undertaken with this object. 
It became increasingly apparent that either 
the Mahrattas must be put down, or they 
would eat up India. The danger increased 
when Scindia, the most powerful of the 
Mahratta chiefs, brought in French officers 
to instruct and command his army. At the 
end of the century he had a well disciplined 
force of forty thousand men of all arms in 
northern India. In southern India another 
large army, under French instructors, had 
been formed under Tipu Sultan, the Muham- 
madan ruler of Mysore. This was the situa- 
tion in 1798 when the Marquis of Wellesley 
became Governor-General. England was at 
death-grips with Napoleon in Europe, and 
the new Governor-General had full authority 
to make India safe at all costs. This he 
effectually did. In the course of five years not 
only was Tipu extinguished and the Mahrattas 
humbled by crushing defeats and stripped of 
much territory, but by a series of treaties the 
principal native states were now brought under 
control. They were isolated from each other, 
they were required to accept for the protec- 



ITS HISTORY 61 

tion of their territories " subsidiary " forces 
raised and controlled by the Company, and 
their external policy was subjected to res- 
traint. From this time (1805) the Company 
became the strongest power in India. 

The second period was one of reconstruction. 
British supremacy under the form of a 
trading Company had successfully asserted 
itself by the sword. British rule had now 
to justify itself by showing that it could 
and would do more for India than any of the 
native and foreign governments of the past. 
But in building up civil institutions and 
establishing law and order within its domin- 
ions, the Company had to work with the 
trowel in one hand and the sword in the other. 
In 1817 Mahratta ambitions again came to a 
head. This time a sterner and more effective 
settlement was made. The rule of the Brah- 
man dynasty at Poona was extinguished, and 
its territories annexed. The other Mahratta 
chiefs were placed under much stricter control, 
and the ancient states of Rajputana which 
they were systematically exhausting were 
brought under direct British protection 
and saved from extinction. In 1845 a 
trouble which had for years hung over 
northern India like a thunder cloud, finally 
burst. The Sikhs of the Punjab were an 
example of the strongest form of political 
society that the East knows — a military com- 



62 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

munity nurtured on a fanatical religion and 
the blood of martyrs. Originally a reformed 
sect of Hinduism they had been mercilessly 
hunted down and nearly exterminated by 
the bigoted emperor Aurangzeb and after 
him by the Afghans. Under a real military 
genius, the Maharaja Ranjit Singh, they 
overthrew their Muhammadan oppressors, 
drove the Afghans out of the Punjab, and 
became a nation in arms. Ranjit Singh dur- 
ing a long reign loyally observed tne treaty 
of alliance which he had entered into with the 
Company. His death in 1839 unchamed tne 
ambitions of the Sikh army. A period of 
anarchy ensued, and finally its leaders 
flung it against the British power. Two 
wars were necessary (m 1845 and 1848), 
marked by obstinate fighting, before the 
Sikh army was finally extinguished, and the 
peasant soldiery returned to the plough. Their 
reconciliation to British rule is one of tne 
most remarkable incidents of modern Indian 
history. 

The dissolution of the Sikh power seemed 
to remove the last danger to the internal 
peace of the continent. Under the vigorous 
administration oi Lord Daihousie, India to 
outward appearance was entering on an era 
of material ana social progress. But beneath 
the surface the iorces of reaction were at 
work. The Indian mutiny was primarily a 



ITS HISTORY 63 

military revolt, though it gave expression to 
the unrest and vague disquietude which the 
company's rapid advance and the introduc- 
tion of western principles of government and 
morality had occasioned in India generally. 
It was a struggle, said Lord Lawrence, 
" between Christianity and civilization on 
one side and barbarism and heathenism on the 
other." The native army was spoilt by privi- 
leges granted to it, and it had an exaggerated 
sense of its own power. It was five times as 
numerous as the British forces then serving 
in India. It was elated by victorious cam- 
paigns : at the same time its caste prejudices 
had been roused by expeditions across the 
" black water," as the Hindus termed the 
sea, and by other military requirements. 
The introduction of a new rifle taking car- 
tridges reported to be smeared with hogs' 
grease was the match that lit the fire. The 
sepoys turned savagely against their English 
officers, and broke out into murderous mutiny. 
" The wild fanatic outbreak of 1857," as 
Sir Alfred Lyall has termed it, was 
" reactionary in its causes and revolutionary 
in its effects. It shook for a moment the 
empire's foundations, but it cleared the area 
for reconstruction and improvement." Order 
had to be deduced from confusion, and the 
foundations of a new and uniform policy laid. 
The direct government of India was transferred 



64 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

in 1858 by Act of Parliament from the Com- 
pany to the Crown. In the language of the 
Proclamation addressed by Queen Victoria 
to the princes and peoples of India, the Crown 
assumed " the government of the territories 
in India, hitherto administered in trust for us 
by the Honourable East India Company." 
The step was necessary, as a change in this 
direction was overdue. In a notable defence 
of the East India Company, John Stuart 
Mill maintained that the change would work 
folly and mischief, and predicted in his 
Autobiography that it would convert the 
administration of India " into a thing to be 
scrambled for by the second and third class 
of English politicians." But these evils 
have not come to pass. The rule of the 
Crown in India has in no respect been inferior, 
and is in most respects greatly superior to that 
of the Company. The double-government 
system was at best a clumsy expedient. 
The assumption of direct sovereignty by the 
Crown terminated an ambiguous and mis- 
leading division of responsibilities and powers. 
" It sealed the unity of Indian government 
and opened a new era." The quotation is 
from King Edward's Proclamation of 1908, 
likewise addressed, after an interval of fifty 
years, to the princes and peoples of India. 
" The journey," the Proclamation went on to 
say, " was arduous and the advance may 



ITS HISTORY 65 

have sometimes seemed slow ; but the 
incorporation of many diversified communities, 
and of some three hundred millions of the 
human race, under British guidance and 
control, has proceeded steadfastly and without 
pause. We survey our labours of the past 
half century with clear gaze and good con- 
science." 

With these stately and noble words this 
necessarily imperfect sketch of the past of 
India may fitly end. The Proclamation of 
1858 was a pledge of good government to the 
princes and peoples of India, and set out the 
principles on which the government would be 
conducted. In a later section we shall see 
how the pledge has been fulfilled. 



CHAPTER III 

THE PEOPLE 

Eminent authorities tell us that the distinctive 
feature of the modern world is the frank 
recognition of nationality and all that it 
involves. They also tell us that the two 
main features of modern history are the 
development of nationalities and the growth 
of individual freedom. Tried by these tests 
India is essentially not part of the modern 
world. It is a great continent in which there 
are no nationalities. The population is an 
immense mixed multitude in different stages 
of material and moral growth, exhibiting an 
extraordinary variety of peoples, creeds and 
manners. Much of India may still be regarded 
as the best surviving specimen of the ancient 
world on a large scale. 

Some of the causes of the singular spectacle 
which the country presents have been indi- 
cated in the preceding section. From the 
earliest ages the Indian continent has been 
subject to invasions and migrations of great 

66 



THE PEOPLE 67 

bodies of foreign races from the north. 
Some seven centuries ago the Muhammadan 
supremacy was established in northern India. 
It overthrew the political structure and insti- 
tutions of Hinduism and planted Islam as a 
separate community in the midst of an image- 
worshipping polytheistic people. Henceforward 
the two streams of belief — the Moslem with his 
one God, and the Hindu with his multitude 
of gods — ^flowed side by side without inter- 
mingling. In every part of the continent two 
societies faced each other — ^the Muhammadan 
with his traditions of conquest and rule ; the 
Hindu, with a vague but deeply rooted sense 
of belonging to the soil, and of encompassing 
his conquerors. 

But something more than the perpetual 
influx of new races and the friction of rival 
religions are needed to explain the absence of 
nationality and the abundance of separate 
types. In European countries the different 
races that have come in have blended and 
produced a more or less uniform type. Celt, 
Saxon, Dane, Norseman and Norman in our 
own country have fused together ; only in 
outlying regions, such as Wales, do we recog- 
nise a distinct strain. In India there has 
been blending up to a certain point : but 
something at an early stage evidently checked, 
if it did not altogether stop, the natural 
process of amalgamation. As we shall explain 

C2 



68 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

in another section, this influence was of 
a religious and racial kind. Brahmanism 
stepped in and enforced by religious sanctions 
the colour distinction between the Aryan 
settlers and the dusky indigenous races 
whom they found in India. Occupations 
were made hereditary, and fenced in by 
prohibitions against intermarriage. That is 
to say, the institution of caste was created ; 
and its effect has been to put the population 
into innumerable separate pens, and to keep 
the inmates of each pen apart. " Nowhere 
else in the world," it has been said, "do we 
find the population of a large continent 
broken up into an infinite number of mutually 
exclusive aggregates, the members of which 
are forbidden by an inexorable social law to 
marry outside the group to which they them- 
selves belong. . . . All the recognised 
races of Europe are the result of a process of 
crossing which has fused a number of different 
tribal types into a more or less definable 
national type. In India the process of fusion 
has long ago been arrested, and the degree of 
progress which it had made up to the point 
at which it ceased to operate is expressed in 
the physical characteristics of the groups 
which have been left behind. There is 
consequently no national type, and no nation 
in the ordinary sense of the term." The 
traveller in India can test this statement in 



THE PEOPLE 69 

two simple ways. If during a long journey 
he observes the population of the railway 
stations, he will notice a change of type. 
The change is very gradual, but in the course 
of twelve hours quite noticeable. If he 
makes a stay at a place and should pass 
different sections of the inhabitants under 
review, he will notice marked physical differ- 
ences between individuals of different castes, 
differences of colour, build, stature, shape of 
head, features, hair. At one end of the scale 
is the Brahman, with light complexion and 
almost European type of face and build ; at 
the other the swarthy squat form of the coolie 
in the streets. 

A great deal of attention has been given 
in recent years by skilled observers to classi- 
fying and grouping the different elements 
of the Indian population. They have been 
able to distinguish seven main physical 
types. 

The first is the Indo-Aryan type. It is 
met with chiefly in the Punjab, Rajputana 
and Kashmir. The true Rajput or Sikh is 
of this type. It approaches most closely to 
that ascribed to the traditional Aryan colonists 
of India. It is that of a tall, slight, loose- 
limbed man, with a head long in proportion 
to its breadth, a long and prominent nose, and 
a skin of light transparent brown. In marked 
contrast to this is the Dravidian type. 



70 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

The term Dravidian requires an explanation. 
Originally it meant the group of languages 
spoken in southern India, and then was 
employed to describe the races speaking those 
languages. These races are fundamentally of 
the same stock, and they are found not only 
in the south but also in the centre of India. 
The purest examples of the original stock, 
before it was modified by the admixture of 
Aryan and other elements, are found among 
the primitive and half -civilised tribes dwelling 
in the low hills and jungles of the Chota 
Nagpur plateau and the Vindhya hills. 
They are short dark men, with long black 
hair tending to curl, and with very broad 
noses depressed at the root. To the tea- 
planter they are invaluable, as they are 
hardy and stand exposure. " Labour," wrote 
the late Sir Herbert Risley m his most 
informing and valuable work. The People of 
India, " is the birthright ot the pure Dravidian 
and as a coolie ne is m great demand wherever 
one meets him. Whether hoeing tea in Assam, 
cutting rice in the swamps ot Eastern Bengal, 
or doing scavenger's work in the streets of 
Calcutta, he is recognised at a glance by 
his black skin, his swarthy figure, and the 
negro-like proportions of his nose." The 
third type is the Mongolian. It is represented 
by the races peopling the border-land between 
India and Tibet, and by the Burmese. The 



THE PEOPLE 71 

type is familiar to us in the Chinese. It is that 
of a small man with broad head, narrow 
slant eyes, a dark complexion tinged with 
yellow, and a flat face. 

These are the main stocks which have 
peopled India. The four other types which 
have been recognised are admixture of these 
or of other stocks. They are the Aryo- 
Dravidian, the Mongolo-Dravidiatif the Scytho- 
Dravidian, and the Turko-Iranian. 

The Aryo-Dravidian, as the term implies, 
is the result of the intermixture in varying 
proportions of the Indo-Aryan and Dravi- 
dian stocks, the former element predominating 
in the higher classes, and the latter in the 
lower. In the Punjab the Indo-Aryan race is 
found without Dravidian admixture. In the 
south and centre of the continent the mass 
of the population is more or less pure Dravi- 
dian. But in the country to the east of the 
Punjab, commonly known as the Gangetic 
valley, the whole population is an admixture 
of the two stocks. The Brahman there is not 
pure Indo-Aryan, but he approximates to that 
type. The lower the caste, the nearer does its 
type come to the blackness and the stumpy 
figure of the Dravidian. The Mongolo- 
Dravidian type, as the name implies, is a 
blend of the Mongolian and Dravidian races. 
The population of Bengal and Assam is of this 
strain. In that part of India there is very 



72 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

little Aryan blood. The broad head and the 
dark skin of the average Bengali mark 
his origin. In pre-historic times Mongolian 
tribes must have poured into that part 
of India from the highlands of Tibet and 
China, and mingled with the aboriginal 
inhabitants. 

The Scytho-Dravidian type is represented 
by the Mahratta race inhabiting the western 
side of the Deccan. The characteristics of 
this race point to a blend of the Tartar or 
Scythian element from the steppes of central 
Asia with the original Dravidian inhabitants 
of India. And this is consistent with certain 
historical facts. Long after the settlement 
of the Aryans in the Punjab successive 
swarms of Scythian or Tartar invaders 
forced the northern passes and passed down 
the Indus valley. It is supposed that they 
eventually moved on into the Deccan, and 
established themselves among the Dravidian 
inhabitants. If the theory be true, it solves 
a long unsettled problem as to the origin of 
the Mahratta race. 

The last type to be mentioned is the 
Turko-Iranian. This is not found in India 
proper but in the border-lands to the west 
of the Indus which are peopled by Beloch 
and Afghan tribes. In former days the 
Afghans were fancifully identified as the 
descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. Their 



THE PEOPLE 73 

physiognomy is suggestive of the Israelite, 
and they have some vague traditions of such an 
origin. But more accurate enquiry has shown 
that they are an admixture of the Iranian 
race inhabiting the highlands of Persia and 
the Turk or Tartar stock. They have the tall 
stature, the long nose, the fair complexion 
of the Indo-European stock to which the 
Iranians belonged ; and the broad head of 
the Turk. 

Such are the seven main types into which 
by careful observations and measurements 
the Indian population has been graded. 
It is a useful classification because it interprets 
history in the light of present facts. It 
explains the effects of the successive invasions 
of foreign races which India has experienced. 
But it is necessarily very rough and is only 
a general guide to the distribution of the 
Indian races. In southern India for instance, 
where the mass of the people are of the 
indigenous stock, there is a considerable 
Brahman element which is unquestionably 
Aryan in type. There was no Aryan conquest 
of the south, but Aryans migrated there 
and have kept themselves apart almost as a 
separate community. There is a great gulf 
between the fair-skinned southern Indian 
Brahman and the dusky multitudes of the 
general population. In the Punjab again, 
though the prevailing type is unquestionably 



74 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

Aryan, there are many descendants of Afghan 
Persian or Mughal adventurers and soldiers 
of fortune whom the Muhammadan con- 
querors brought into India in their train. 
Equally is this the case throughout the 
greater part of Hindustan or, as it is now 
called, the United Provinces of Agra and 
Oudh. It is not uncommon there to come 
across groups of families or even clans whose 
ancestors rode with the Emperor Babar 
to the taking of Delhi. There is a large tract 
in that region known as Rohilkand, larger than 
most English counties, of wnich the Afghan 
tribe of Rohillas possessed themselves during 
the anarchy of the eighteenth century, and 
where they are still numerous. 

The Rajput clans are the purest specimens 
of the Aryan race in India. But it would 
be a mistake to suppose that the mass of the 
population of Rajputana is of this type. 
The Rajputs are there as rulers and overlords. 
But they are in a great minority. They own 
the land, but they do not till it ; for a Rajput 
thinks it a disgrace to plough or sow, or do 
any other manual work. The cultivating 
and trading classes are of Dravidian and 
mixed Dravidian types. And still lower down 
in the social scale, in the recesses of the 
hills and jungles, the pure Dravidian is found 
in the person of the Bheel. The Bheel has 
been drawn to the life by Sib Alfred Lyall 



THE PEOPLE 75 

in his Asiatic Studies, Sir Alfred Lyall 
has thus described a scene in the hill 
tracts of Rajputana. "The tract is 
mainly peopled by the aboriginal tribe of 
Bheels and the head man of a Bheel village 
is being examined touching a recent foray. 
A very black little man, with a wisp of cloth 
around his ragged loins, stands forth, bow and 
quiver in hand, swears by the dog, and speaks 
out sturdily : ' Here is the herd we lifted ; 
we render back all but three cows, of which 
two we roasted and eat on the spot after 
harrying the village, and the third we sold for 
a keg of liquor to wash down the flesh. 
As for the Brahman we shot in the scuffle, 
we will pay the proper blood-money.' A 
slight shudder runs through the high-caste 
Hindu officials who record this candid state- 
ment ; a sympathetic grin flits across the 
face of a huge Afghan, who has come wander- 
ing down for service or gang-robbery into 
these jungles where he is to the Bheels 
as a shark among small pike ; and it is 
clear that we have got into a stratum 
of society far below Aryan or Brahmanic 
prejudices." 

Enough has been said to show the strange 
mixture of races and types that go to make 
the peoples of India. The sevenfold classi- 
fication, it should be noted, has nothing to do 
with religions or languages. The fact that 



76 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

an Indian is of Aryan or Dravidian stock, 
or a blend of these or other stocks, is no 
certain guide to his religion or tongue. As 
regards religions, it will be shown later on 
that eleven persons out of twelve in India 
profess either Hinduism or Muhammadanism, 
the Hindus being in a vast majority ; while 
the twelfth person is ordinarily a Buddhist, 
or else a half savage who believes in spirits, 
ghosts, and magic. 

The Bheel in Sir Alfred Lyall's description 
belongs to this last class, as do all the primitive 
tribes of the hills and jungles throughout 
India. Indian Muhammadans are of all 
races, though from political causes they are 
unevenly distributed over the continent. 
They are most numerous in north-west India 
and again in the eastern districts of lower 
Bengal. West of the Indus, as might be 
expected from the proximity of the Islamic 
countries of Persia and Afghanistan, nearly 
every person is a Muhammadan. In the west 
and south-west of the Punjab Moslems pre- 
dominate both in the towns and among the 
rural population. In the eastern Punjab and 
in the United Provinces as far east as Benares, 
the town population is largely Muhammadan, 
and in places there is a considerable Muhamma- 
dan element among the country population. 
Some Indian Muhammadans are of foreign 
origin, and show it in their features. But the 



THE PEOPLE 77 

great majority are the descendants of Indian 
converts. In the Punjab one section of a 
tribe will be Hindu by religion and another 
Muhammadan. When and why the con- 
version took place is not always possible 
to ascertain. In some cases it was no doubt 
forcible, being pressed upon the vanquished 
by their Moslem conquerors as the price 
of life. But more generally it was the 
result of persuasion and self-interest. In 
eastern Bengal, where the Muhammadans 
to-day outnumber the Hindus, the population 
must evidently have been converted en masse. 
At the time of the Muhammadan conquest 
Hinduism had little hold on the half -Mongolian 
half-Dra vidian people of these parts, and they 
readily accepted the new faith. In all regions 
of the world the religion of the Prophet has 
always had a great attraction for savage and 
semi-civilised races, and among them its 
progress has invariably been rapid. A social 
system such as Hinduism, with an elaborate 
theology and a priestly order, offers much 
. greater resistance to a rival creed, whether 
it be that of Islam or of Christianity. Accord- 
ingly we find that Muhammadanism nowa- 
days makes few converts in the Hindu 
community. But Muhammadans for all that 
are on the increase in India. Their social 
customs, which allow the re-marriage of 
widows and do not favour child marriage. 



78 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

undoubtedly give them a natural advantage 
over the Hindus ; and among the despised 
and depressed classes that are practically 
outside the pale of Hinduism they still win 
converts. Too much stress can easilv be 
laid on the point that Muhammadanism is 
essentially a missionary religion, whereas 
Brahmanism is not ; for Islam in India has 
certainly lost much of the proselytising zeal 
which it once possessed. But at least it makes 
the path of the convert easy. It welcomes all 
comers without regard to race or caste. It 
assigns to the lowliest convert the full privi- 
leges of a believer. It allows him to retain 
in his new life superstitions and practices 
that are dear to him. The wonder is that 
with all these advantages Muhammadanism 
does not make even greater progress in India 
than the census registers. 

Language in India may or may not be a 
guide to race. Very often it is not. Of 
languages in India there is no lack. Thirty 
or forty distinct Indian languages are enume- 
rated by experts, while the number of dialects 
is much greater. But these languages fall 
into three or four groups, and these groups 
roughly correspond with the racial origins 
of the population. The two groups of most 
importance comprise respectively the Indo- 
European or Aryan languages and the Dra- 
vidian. Two minor groups with which we 



THE PEOPLE 79 

need not concern ourselves are the Kolarian, 
comprising the curious and very ancient speech 
oi the primitive tribes of Chota Nagpur, and the 
Tibetan-Chinese group, of which the Burmese 
language is the most important. Broadly 
speaking, the languages of the Aryan group 
have extended themselves at the expense of 
the Dravidian. The latter, of which the 
principal branches are Telugu, Tamil, and 
Kanarese, hold firmly the south where the 
people are Dravidian. The Aryan group — 
Punjabi, Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, etc. — 
are practically the languages of the remainder 
of the continent. Thus the people of Bengal 
who have very little Aryan blood speak a 
language derived from the ancient sanskritic 
tongue. The same is the case with the mixed 
Dravidian population of the central regions 
of India as far south as the Kishna river. 
This is an important fact, as it shows that 
notwithstanding the extraordinary varieties 
of race and speech that are found in India, 
there is an underlying bond of civilisation 
in the language and sacred literature of 
the Aryans. Even in southern India this 
literature has been widely disseminated 
among the Dravidian people in their own 
vernaculars, through the labours of Brahman 
scholars. 

But any account of the races or languages 
of India would be incomplete without mention 



80 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

of the influence that the spread of the English 
language is exerting over the population 
generally. In 1836, under the powerful 
advocacy of Lord Macaulay, a member 
of the Governor- General's council in Calcutta, 
the Indian government decided that higher 
education in the country should be given 
in English. " The question before us," he 
wrote, " is simply whether, when it is in our 
power to teach this language — English — we 
shall teach languages in which, by universal 
confession, there are no books on any subject 
which deserve to be compared with our own ; 
whether, when we can teach European science, 
we shall teach systems which, by universal 
confession, wherever they differ from those 
of Europe, differ for the worse ; and whether, 
when we patronise sound philosophy and 
true history, we shall countenance at the 
public expense, medical doctrines which 
would disgrace an English farrier, astronomy 
which would move laughter in the girls of 
an English boarding school, history abounding 
with kings thirty feet high, and reigns thirty 
thousand years long, and geography made 
up of seas of treacle and seas of butter." 
Lord Macaulay has been blamed for ignoring 
the sentimental attachment of the Indian 
peoples to their ancient book lore and for 
proposing to replace it in all public institutions 
by a foreign language and literature. It has 



THE PEOPLE 81 

also been said that politically the decision 
was wrong : that the new educational system 
cut Indian thought adrift from its old moorings 
and prematurely launched it on the sea of 
western speculation : that it destroyed the 
Indian's old convictions and prejudices with- 
out putting anything solid in their place, 
and gave him intellectual freedom before he 
was fit to use it. These are objections for 
which there is a good deal to be said. But 
on the broad issue as to whether the English 
language should be the medium of higher 
education, Lord Macaulay was unquestionably 
right. If India was to be helped to fall into 
line with western civilisation and to be 
admitted to modern knowledge, no other 
conclusion was possible. The abruptness of 
the change, and the preponderance given to 
literature over science in the high schools 
and colleges, were mistakes of detail, and do 
not affect the principle. Indian opinion is 
overwhelmingly in favour of English. Suitable 
provision everywhere exists for the teaching 
of oriental languages and literatures. But 
the youth of the country turns to English 
because it is at once the door to employment 
t and to knowledge. We are told that through- 
out the Roman empire the public business 
was conducted in Latin, and that that language 
was used in every official act. In the British 
Indian empire the English language plays 



82 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

the part that Latin did in the empire of the 
Caesars. It is the language of official business. 
The laws are made in it : the work of the 
highest courts of justice is conducted in it : 
the orders of the government are issued in it : 
and public affairs are discussed in it. In 
comparison with English the various vernacu- 
lar languages have merely a local utility. 
Within their respective limits they have 
a much larger body of readers than English, 
but English inspires ideas. The educated 
classes draw their knowledge from English 
books and newspapers. Behind the vernacular 
journal is the man who reads English, though 
he may strangely misinterpret and misuse 
the information and arguments which he 
obtains from this source. 

It is safe to say that the English language 
and what it stands for is the most powerful 
force acting to-day in India in the direction 
of social and national unity. It has been 
said that the languages of southern India are 
as unintelligible in Lahore as they would be 
in London, and that a native of Calcutta or 
Bombay is as much a foreigner in Delhi or 
Peshawar as an Englishman is a foreigner 
in Rome or Paris. But the Englishman who 
reads and speaks French does not feel himself 
wholly a foreigner in Paris. The English- 
speaking Indian likewise is not a foreigner in 
any part of India where English is spoken. One 



THE PEOPLE 83 

of the novel features of modern Indian life is 
the frequent holding of Pan-Indian congresses 
for the discussion of political, social, industrial, 
religious and other subjects. These assemblies, 
which bring together the most prominent 
men from all parts of India, would be im- 
possible were it not for the common basis 
provided by the English language. It may 
also be added that they could not be held if 
India were without railways, as the greater 
part of Asia still is. When we reflect on all 
this we see that new forces are operating on 
the people, and are breaking down the 
walls of separation that diversities of race 
and language, to say nothing of religions 
and the caste system, have erected in the 
past. 

But we must not exaggerate the extent to 
which a knowledge of English, or indeed any 
book knowledge at all, is at present possessed 
by the population. In a population of 
three hundred million there may be a million 
persons can read and speak English, and of 
these many know it very imperfectly. It is 
the tendency that is important, and the 
tendency is for English to spread. As to 
education generally, the Indian population 
has the distinction of being one of the most 
illiterate in the world. Only ten per cent, 
of the male population and one per cent, 
of the female population can read and write. 



84 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

Only one boy in four attends school. Outside 
missionary and other special circles there is 
practically no female education. Popular 
prejudice against it is firmly entrenched 
in the institutions of caste and early marriage, 
in the purdah system, and in the oriental 
view of the mission of women. The traditional 
duty of the Indian woman is to be a wife 
and look after the household : and it is 
thought that for this education will spoil 
her. Nor is there any general desire for 
schooling for boys. Three-lourths of the 
people are agriculturists, and the cultivator 
all the world over is sceptical as to the utility 
of the three r.s. The Indian peasant believes 
that they spoil a lad and turn him from the 
land to town life. The writer in his younger 
days has been roundly rebuked by sturdy 
cultivators for suggesting that a school in 
their village would be a good thing. There 
is this to be said that the Indian peasant, 
though illiterate, is not without knowledge. 
He has been carefully trained from boyhood 
in the ritual and the religious observances of his 
forefathers. He hears the ancient epics read 
in their pithy vernacular form. He is full 
of lore about crops and soils and birds and 
beasts. In short, he is a disciplined intelli- 
gent person, moulded on a traditional system 
which in spite of many defects, is not without 
its good points. This is not an argument for 



THE PEOPLE 85 

withholding elementary education from him. 
But it explains why in rural India a knowledge 
of reading and writing may not be quite as 
indispensable as we with our western ideas 
are disposed to assume. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE CASTE SYSTEM 

The institution of caste is a peculiar feature 
of Indian society. In no other country 
does anything of the same kind exist. It 
has consequently attracted a great deal 
of attention, and has been the subject of 
minute study by very competent observers 
and scholars. 

Caste is a system by which the accident 
of birth determines once for all the whole 
course of a man's social and domestic relations. 
Throughout life he must eat, drink, dress, 
marry and give in marriage in accordance 
with the usages of the community in which 
he is born. The word itself is of Portuguese 
origin, and is derived from the Latin castus, 
and signifies purity of blood. When the 
Portuguese settled on the coast of India, 
they were at once struck with this peculiarity 
of the natives about them. They recorded 
that the Indians " divide themselves into dis- 
tinct races or castes (castas) of greater or 
less dignity, and keep these so superstitiously 
86 



THE CASTE SYSTEM 87 

that no one of a higher caste can eat and drink 
with those of a lower." They noted accurately 
the aspect of the caste system that is most 
obvious to an outside observer. But in point 
of fact the marriage aspect of the caste 
system is of greater importance, and is more 
fundamental. If it were not for the regula- 
tions relating to marriage, the restrictions 
regarding food and drink would be insufficient 
to maintain the institution. Its end and 
object is to keep society rigidly divided into 
a number of permanent groups and to prevent 
them from amalgamating. This cannot be 
accomplished without prohibiting marriages 
outside the group. Our knowledge of the 
usages of the caste system as it exists to-day 
in India is abundant. The chief difficulty 
in describing its practical working lies in the 
multitude of the facts. But when we try 
to account for its origin and to trace its 
development, we enter a field of enquiry where 
great differences of opinion exist, and where 
many theories are met with. Let us begin 
with this question of origin. 

If we should ask an orthodox Hindu how 
this caste system originated and developed 
he would refer to the laws of Manu and to 
other ancient Sanscrit texts of a semi-priestly, 
semi-legal kind. The institutes of Manu might 
be likened in a very general way, and subject 
to large qualifications, to the Hebrew book of 



88 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

Leviticus in our Bible. The work was 
compiled about a.d. 200. It is a priestly code, 
and it explains the constitution of Indian 
society from the point of view of the Brah- 
manical priesthood. According to Manu, 
there were three sacred or " twice-born " 
castes. The Brahman issued from the head 
of Brahma, the soul of the universe ; the 
Kshattriya or warrior, from his arms ; the 
Vaisya, or husbandman, from his thighs. 
There was a fourth or Sudra caste, which 
was not admitted to the sacrifices or to the 
reading of the Vedas, and whose sole function 
was to serve the twice-born. Below the 
Sudra came a multitude of lower castes, 
the offspring of mixed or irregular marriages, 
or of fathers who neglected the ceremonial 
worship ; and lowest of all, there were 
" out-castes." In the comprehensive list of 
these inferior castes there are names of castes 
which exist to this day, and various menial 
and degrading occupations are assigned to 
them. 

The meaning of the epithet " twice-born," 
which plays so important a part in the 
religious ideas of Hinduism, may be briefly 
explained. The second or spiritual birth takes 
place when the Brahman or Kshattriya boy 
is taught how to offer his first oblation to the 
gods, is made to recite short sacred words or 
Vedic texts which serve as daily prayers, and 



THE CASTE SYSTEM 89 

is ceremonially invested with the " sacred 
thread." The ceremony marks the beginning 
of his spiritual life. Not till then does he 
become really and truly a member of his 
divinely appointed caste. The sacred thread, 
which is a thin coil of three or more loose 
strands, is worn over the left shoulder. It is 
of cotton in the case of a Brahman, and of 
hemp or wool in other cases. It is the dearest 
possession of the Brahman, the symbol of his 
divine origin. It is the concrete embodiment 
of the fundamental ideas of Hinduism. 

To return to Manu and his institutes. 
When modern scholars got to work on the 
old texts, they saw that underneath the 
jumble of priestly lore and childish stories 
there was a basis of fact. For an ancient writer 
never wholly invents : he takes the material 
for his fiction from the actual world around 
him. In this account of the caste system 
three points were clear. The system was 
obviously designed to glorify the Brahmans. 
All through they are seen to have the best 
of it. Secondly, the basis of the system 
was descent and purity of blood. And 
thirdly, occupations or callings were heredi- 
tary and position in the caste scale went with 
the nature of the occupation. In seeking a 
rational explanation of the origin of caste 
modern scholars have differed in the weight 
they have assigned to these several features 



90 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

in Manu's account, and thereby they have 
come to somewhat different conclusions. 

According to one theory caste arose solely 
out of occupations. Primitive society, it 
is said, is a very simple affair. It consists 
of the rulers, the cultivators, and possibly the 
priests. These occupations are the property 
of families, and are hereditary. As society 
becomes more complex, other occupations 
emerge, and likewise become hereditary. 
The later occupations are less dignified than 
the primary ones, and rank lower in the 
social scale. In time there is a regular 
gradation of society on the basis of hereditary 
occupations, and this is given a certain fixity 
and rigidity by the sanctions of religion. 
Of this theory it is enough to say that it fails 
to account for the peculiarities of Indian caste. 

A second theory, which was worked out 
with great brilliancy and wealth of illustration 
by the late Sir Denzil Ibbetson in his 
Punjab Census Report, leans also to com- 
munity of occupations as accounting for the 
origin and diversity of Indian castes ; but 
ascribes the form which the caste system 
finally took to the extraordinary exaltation 
of the priestly office in India. The Brahmans, 
in order to exalt their own position, insisted 
on the necessarily hereditary nature of 
occupation ; and they supported this principle 
by inventing a purely artificial set of rules 



THE CASTE SYSTEM 91 

about marriage and inter-marriage, by declar- 
ing certain occupations and foods to be 
impure, and by prescribing the conditions 
and degrees of social intercourse permitted 
between the several castes. This theory is 
open to objections. In no other country have 
trade guilds or other similar associations of 
workmen so formed themselves into absolutely 
closed groups within which alone marriage 
is permitted. Again, it is difficult to believe 
that industrial groups of the kind supposed 
would submit themselves to a strict code of 
rules about marriage and the like, purely 
artificial in character and obviously framed 
in the self-interest of the priests. Indian 
caste would seem to require for its origin some 
stronger compelling force than community 
of occupation. 

A third theory has been suggested by a 
distinguished French orientalist, M. Senart. 
He points out that among the Greeks and 
Romans, to whom the Indo- Aryan race was 
akin, there existed the three group divisions 
of the family, the clan and the tribe. (In 
Latin gens, curia, tribus.) These correspond 
to the family, the sub-caste, and the caste 
of India. The distinctive feature of the 
Indian caste system is that a man must not 
marry within his sub-caste group and must 
not marry outside his caste group. Similar 
restrictions on marriage existed in Greece 



92 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

and Rome. In Rome there was a long 
struggle before the plebeians obtained the 
right of lawful marriage with the patrician 
women. Similarly there were restrictions 
about food and the hearth-fire in Greece 
and Rome which recall those in force in 
India. In India, when a man is excluded 
from caste, his " tobacco and water " is said 
to be stopped. He may not drink from an 
old caste-fellow's vessel or have a pull at his 
pipe. In Rome the formula was exclusion 
from water and fire {aqua et igni), fire here 
meaning the sacred fire of the hearth. From 
these and other analogies M, Senart infers 
that the caste system of India Is merely 
the extension of the ancient Aryan family 
system. But if this is so, how is it that while 
in Europe the family, the clan, and the tribe 
have been absorbed into the nation, in India 
they have solidified into cast-iron compart- 
ments into which the whole population is 
distributed and locked up ? M. Senart 
would find the explanation of this remarkable 
difference in the circumstances of the Aryan 
settlement in India. The Aryans were a 
small and scattered people in the midst of 
alien races. To preserve themselves as a 
separate race they were driven to fence in 
the race by high doctrines about descent and 
purity of blood ; and in this they were aided 
by their Brahman priests. 



THE CASTE SYSTEM 93 

Such are some of the theories about the 
origin of Indian castes. The theories are not 
wholly opposed to each other. They lay hold 
of different aspects of a very ancient institution 
which in taking its present shape was exposed 
to diverse influences. The latest school of 
investigators in India, while welcoming the 
clue given by M. Senart to analogous 
institutions of other portions of the Indo- 
European race, is disposed to lay stress on the 
colour element and racial antagonism apparent 
in the ancient scheme of classes as given in 
Manu. The very word used to denote these 
classes in Sanscrit means " colour." It is 
conjectured that the Aryans subdued the 
inferior Dravidian race, established them- 
selves as conquerors and captured women 
according to their needs. By marrying the 
captured women they had to some extent 
modified their original type ; but a certain 
pride of blood remained in them, and when 
their number had mcreased to a certain 
point, they closed their ranks to all further 
intermixture of blood. The principle thus 
established, the formation of castes and sub- 
castes proceeded apace. The caste in each case 
stood for purity ot blood. The invaders averted 
complete amalgamation with the inferior race 
by taking women but not giving them. They 
behaved in fact towards the Dra vidians whom 
they conquered in exactly the same way as some 



94 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

planters in America behaved to the African 
slaves whom they imported. Manu, for 
instance, reserved his strongest invective 
for the son of a Brahman woman by a Sudra. 
He described him as " that lowest of mortals," 
and condemned him to live outside the village, 
to clothe himself in the garments of the dead, 
to eat from broken dishes, to execute criminals, 
and to carry out the corpses of friendless men. 
There is evidently race antagonism and colour 
prejudice in this. 

From the question of the origin of caste 
we may now turn to the working of the 
institution in practice. This will best be seen 
by taking specific instances. 

Let us first take the case of the Rajputs 
as they are found in Rajputana, the home 
of the race. We find them divided into a 
number of clans. A clansman would not 
describe himself merely as a Rajput. He would 
add that he is a " Sisodia," a " Rathor," a 
" Kachwaha," a " Jadon," and so on, men- 
tioning his clan. The caste rule under which 
he lives requires him to marry a Rajput 
woman and prohibits him from marrying a 
woman of his own clan. He is thus between 
two circles. He may not marry outside the 
larger circle, and he may not marry within 
the inner one. The larger circle is known 
as the " endogamous " (gamos, Greek for 
marriage), or marrying-in group. The smaller 



THE CASTE SYSTEM 95 

one is the " exogamous," or marrying-out 
group. The " endogamous " or outer group 
represents the man's " caste," in this case the 
Rajput caste ; and the " exogamous " group 
is his sub-caste. All Rajputs are his fellow- 
castemen, but Rajputs of his clan belong, 
as it were, to one family. As a Rajput clan 
may number one hundred thousand persons, 
his circle of " prohibited degrees " may be 
very large. Theoretically, as far as blood is 
concerned, our Rajput may seek a wife in 
any Rajput clan except his own. But 
practically there is a well-recognised table 
of precedence among the clans, and our Rajput, 
though for due consideration he may take 
his wife from a clan below his own on the 
precedence list, cannot, without loss of 
social esteem, give his daughter to a Rajput 
of a lower clan. He must marry his daughter 
in a clan either above, or at least equal to, 
his own. The custom is known as " hyper- 
gamy " or marrying-up. In it we see the 
feeling which inspired Manu's invective against 
marriages of women with men of lower 
degree. It is a very inconvenient custom, 
and is largely responsible for the existence 
in the past of the barbarous practice of female 
infanticide. The higher the clan, the greater 
is the clansman's difficulty to find a husband 
for his daughter ; and as an unmarried 
daughter is a disgrace to the house, the 



96 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

punctilious Rajput in old days made away 
with baby daughters. 

In other matters our Rajput has to observe 
caste customs at every turn. He must not 
allow a widow in his family to re-marry, much 
less himself marry a widow. His wife must 
keep purdah. He must see that his daughters 
are married at an age when English girls are 
scarcely out of the nursery. He may not 
dine with any one who is not a Rajput. He 
may accept water, if on a journey, from 
certain castes, but not from others. He 
ought not to touch a plough or engage in 
menial occupation. To disobey these rules 
does not necessarily mean loss of caste ; 
that penalty is reserved for the worst offences. 
But disobedience invariably means some 
loss of caste esteem. 

The instance of the Rajput clans of Rajpu- 
tana that we have taken is in some ways 
peculiar. They are organised more on the 
tribal than on the caste system, as the latter 
is usually understood. The caste system 
in the present day very largely turns, as will 
be seen later on, on occupation ; and the 
tendency is to form smaller and smaller 
" endogamous " groups, outside of which 
the casteman must not marry. In Rajputana 
the status of a Rajput comes not from occupa- 
tion but from descent. The poorest clansman 
deems himself and is deemed by his fellows 



THE CASTE SYSTEM ^ 97 

the equal of his chief, and between Rajput 
and Rajput, notwithstanding the numerous 
clans, there is no caste restriction. All this 
seems to show that the institution has fallen 
lightly upon the Rajputs, and that we are 
really in presence of an ancient tribal organi- 
sation which, though it has been absorbed 
into Hinduism and transformed into a caste, 
resembles in many ways the highland clans 
of Scotland two hundred years ago. 

The Mahrattas and the Jats are two other 
important instances of castes of tribal if not 
national type. The Mahratta race is widely 
diffused over the Bombay Presidency, and is 
four millions strong. The whole race practi- 
cally constitutes one caste for marriage and 
for other purposes. A Mahratta is a Mahratta 
by descent and his status is not affected by 
his occupation, though he is generally a 
cultivator. The Jats in the Punjab are what 
the Mahrattas are in the Deccan. They are 
the dominant tribe of owners and cultivators ; 
and like the Mahrattas they form a single 
caste. What is also interesting is that 
Brahmanical Hinduism sits lightly upon the 
Jats. They allow widow marriage and they 
follow their own tribal customs in matters 
of inheritance and the like without regard 
to Hindu law. Indeed, there is some reason 
to think that Mahrattas and Jats were 
Scythian tribes who came into India at a 



98 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

comparatively late date and never fully 
assimilated the Hindu ideas of caste. 

These ideas are seen to perfection among 
the Brahmans themselves. Theoretically, all 
Brahmans form one caste. But the practice 
is very different. They are split up into 
an immense number of groups and sub-groups, 
and these groups and sub-groups for matri- 
monial and other purposes are classified in a 
most intricate fashion. A Brahman may 
not marry inside his own sub-group, and he 
may marry only with one or other of a few 
specified groups or sub-groups. A Brahman's 
wife must not only be a Brahman, but she 
must be a Brahman of a certain group. In 
one province alone there are two hundred 
major groups of Brahmans, none of which 
allow intermarriages. A Brahman of one 
group may even object to take water from a 
Brahman of another group. How is this to 
be explained ? The underlying general cause 
is no doubt intense pride in the supreme 
position of the Brahman relative to the rest 
of mankind, and an equally intense fear of 
pollution through contact with unclean or 
degrading persons or things. There are many 
Brahmans who follow occupations which are 
considered degrading. They sink in the 
social scale, and this in India means loss of 
caste privileges. 

So far we have dealt with castes of the 



. THE CASTE SYSTEM 99 

highest standing. Below them there is 
an immense array of lower castes. The 
census enumerates over two thousand three 
hundred minor castes. The number of 
minor castes is innumerable. The names 
of many of the most widely diffused castes 
indicate occupations. There is the writer 
caste, the herdsmen caste, the milkmen caste, 
the blacksmiths, the village watchmen, and 
so on. Community of occupation or function 
has evidently in these cases formed the basis 
of caste division. Each of these castes 
professes to have a traditional occupation, 
though many of the members have abandoned 
it. A blacksmith or a herdsman will often 
be found among the cultivators of a village. 
And as occupations change, new castes and 
sub-castes are thrown up. The Chumar 
caste works in hides and leather, and is 
regarded as unclean. But if a group in the 
caste should take to a more cleanly occupation, 
it will tend to form itself into a separate 
caste, will probably change its name, and so 
rise in the social scale. We are not un- 
acquainted in our own country with the art 
of rising in the world. There are gradations 
of respectability, and men ordinarily find 
their wives in their own class. But the 
peculiarity of the Indian system is that the 
groups are much more permanent than with 
us, that they repel each other, that intercourse 

D2 



100 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

is prohibited by social and religious penalties, 
and that the individual, however high he may 
rise, carries his caste and its disabilities about 
him till his death. 

Caste is enforced by means of governing 
communities, often called panchayats. The 
caste may be likened to a guild or trades union, 
and governs itself. It sees that no member 
of the caste engages in a degrading occupation, 
works for lower wages than his brethren, eats 
forbidden food, or marries a woman of another 
caste. The extreme penalty is expulsion. 
No one will then eat or drink with the offender, 
visit his house, or marry his daughter. The 
Brahman will not serve him, the barber will 
not shave him, the washerman will not wash 
for him. 

Attempts have been made in different parts 
of India to form a precedence table of castes, 
in the order of social esteem in which they are 
held by Hindus in the present day. The 
higher castes present no great difficulty. The 
Brahman heads the list in all provinces, 
followed by the modern representatives of the 
" twice-born " classes. Below the " twice 
born " no uniform arrangement has proved 
possible. In northern India there are a good 
many castes of moderate respectability from 
whom most Brahmans will take water. These 
correspond to the fourth or " clean " Sudra 
class of Manu's code. Below these are classes 



THE CASTE SYSTEM 101 

from whom Brahmans will not take water, 
but whose touch does not pollute. Below 
these again come the " untouchables." But 
even here there are degrees. Inasmuch as 
the cow is sacred, the extreme of untouch- 
ability is reached by castes that will eat its 
flesh. In southern India, where Brahmanism 
has its stronghold, an extremely elaborate code 
of pollution exists. There are castes whose 
members defile a Brahman at a distance of 
twenty-four or thirty-six or even sixty-four 
feet, as the case may be. They carry an 
atmosphere of impurity about them. They 
may not enter a Hindu temple of the humblest 
sort, or pass through the high caste quarter 
of the village. When they see a Brahman 
they must leave the road or announce their 
approach by a special cry, like lepers in the 
middle ages. The very word " pariah " of 
our dictionaries comes from the name of the 
great labouring caste (the Paraiyan) of the 
southern districts of Madras. They to men 
of the higher castes are unclean and polluted. 
Few of us when we use the word actually 
realise the full infamy of its meaning in its 
country of origin. 

The " depressed classes " in India form a 
vast multitude. Their numbers are estimated 
at from fifty to sixty millions. A question 
that is agitating Hinduism at the present 
moment is as to whether these classes should 



102 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

be counted as Hindus or not. Ten years ago 
the answer would have been emphatically in 
the negative. Even now the conservative 
feeling of the country is for their exclusion. 
But the conscience of the more advanced 
section of the educated Hindus is a little 
sensitive on the point. It is awkward to be re- 
minded by rival Muhammadan politicians that 
more than one-third of the supposed total 
Hindu population is not accepted by Hindus 
as a part of themselves, is not allowed the 
ministration of Brahman priests, is excluded 
from Hindu shrines. It is obviously desirable 
in presence of such an argument to claim the 
" depressed castes " as within the pale of 
Hinduism. But if they are to be so reckoned, 
logic demands that they should be treated 
with greater consideration than at present. 
Educated Hindus see this, and the uplifting 
of these castes figures prominently on the 
programmes of Indian social conferences. 
But the stoutest-hearted reformer admits to 
himself that the difficulties in the way of 
effective action in this matter are great, 
so strong is the hold that caste has on the 
Indian mind. 

An instance will best illustrate this. In 
the south of India there is a large and im- 
portant sect known as the Lingayats or 
worshippers of Siva. The sect arose in the 
twelfth century as a protest against Brah- 



THE CASTE SYSTEM 103 

manical arrogance. It repudiated caste distinc- 
tions, rejected (as it rejects to this day) the 
ministrations of Brahman priests, and took 
its members from all classes. But a reaction 
set in. The descendants of the original con- 
verts formed themselves into a high caste 
section, ciosed their ranks, and refused to 
marry or eat with the rest of the community. 
The latter in a similar way formed themselves 
into separate sub-castes based on the social 
distinctions which the founder had expressly 
abjured. In the 1901 census the Lingayat 
community asked to be recorded as Lingayat 
Brahmans, Lingayat Vaisyas, Lingayat Sudras, 
as the case might be, thus claiming the very 
caste divisions which their founder had 
repudiated. In short caste is in the air of 
India. It infects Muhammadans. It even 
affects the communities of Indian Christians, 
The early Roman Catholic missionaries re- 
tained it among their converts. It is one of 
the most serious questions with which modern 
missionary bodies have to deal. 

It is easy to say hard things of the caste 
system and to point to its defects. The two 
practices of infant marriage and perpetual 
widowhood are so opposed to western ideas 
that any institution v/ith which they are 
bound up or which encourages them seems to 
be self-condemned. Of infant marriage as 
practised in Bengal there can be no defence. 



104 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

But a more rational custom prevails elsewhere, 
and the instances of the Rajput clans of Raj- 
putana and of the Jats of the Punjab show 
that the caste system in this respect is capable 
of reform. The instance of the Jats again 
shows that the prohibition of widow marriage 
is not an essential feature of the caste system, 
though it is in accord with the Brahmanical 
theory of marriage and with the sentiments 
of the great mass of the population. From 
the western point of view the whole position 
of women in India is wrong. But the West 
is not the East, and the conservative Hindu 
would probably say that as things are in 
the East the caste system, with its doctrine 
that every woman should always be under 
male guardianship, makes for the security of 
the family. The perpetuation of the family 
and the purity of its blood are the root ideas 
of Hinduism. It is impossible to judge the 
institution of caste fairly unless the Hindu 
position is understood. 

Caste may also be attacked as destructive 
of the spirit of humanity and incompatible 
with national life. That it narrows the 
circle of human sympathy is obvious ; and 
the absence of any sense of nationality has 
always been a characteristic of the Indian 
peoples. On the other hand it may be said 
of caste that within a limited range it shows 
extraordinary power of evoking sympathy and 



THE CASTE SYSTEM 105 

action for the common good and of maintaining 
the traditional moral law. The caste man is 
not an isolated unit. He is a member of a 
community, however humble it may be. Its 
restraints are always upon him. Its penalties 
are heavy and effective. Conservative Hindus 
dread any weakening of this bond, perceiving 
nothing that would take its place. 

Is caste decaying ? A confident answer is 
not possible. The spread of western education 
in India, the habit of travel, the growth of 
social and political discussion are powerful 
dissolvents. But as yet they affect a very 
limited class. Close observers tell us that the 
tendency to confine inter-marriage to the 
narrowest circle within the caste was never 
stronger, and that infant marriage and 
perpetual widowhood are usages by no means 
on the decline. 



CHAPTER V 

RELIGIONS 

The three great religions of India are Hinduism, 
Muhammadanism, and Buddhism. Buddhism 
is now practically confined to Burma, though 
as we have seen in the historical section it 
was the state religion of India for some 
centuries before and after the birth of Christ. 
The continent of India proper is partitioned 
between Muhammadanism and Hinduism 
in unequal proportions, the Hindus out- 
numbering the Moslems by more than three 
to one. Outside these great historical religions 
there are other creeds which have a substantial 
number of adherents in India. There are in 
round numbers nearly four million Christians, 
three millions Sikhs, over one million Jains. 
And lastly there are some ten millions of per- 
sons belonging to aboriginal and half-civilised 
tribes who for want of a better term are 
classed as " animists." 

Hinduism and Muhammadanism are poles 
apart. The one is the antithesis of the other. 
Hinduism is the genuine product of the 

1C6 



RELIGIONS 107 

Indian mind, It is at once subtle and gross, 
spiritual and sensual. It is accommodating 
and elastic, ready to absorb other rites and 
superstitions and to find a place among its 
own divinities for other strange gods. It has 
a priesthood for sacrificial purposes, but no 
church, no official organisation. It has no 
clear-cut religious tradition or dogmatic code. 
It is intensely aristocratic and anti-social. 
So far from believing that all men are equal 
it grades them into castes and it pronounces 
most of them unclean. Muhammadanism on 
the other hand is foreign to the soil. It is 
not Aryan but Semitic. It is a badge of 
conquest. It is a clear-cut, definite creed ; the 
creed of a single book, the Koran. It allows 
no compromise or accommodations with 
other faiths. It is sternly monotheistic. 
There is one God, and He is to be worshipped 
without image or symbol. It regards a re- 
ligion such as popular Hinduism as gross idol- 
worship, a thing to be put down summarily. 
It is intensely democratic. It knows nothing 
of caste distinctions. In Islam all men are 
equal. Religions so opposed could not 
amalgamate without losing their identities. 
But they may keep on good terms with each 
other ; and when exciting causes are not 
present this is generally the case in India. The 
Hindu in quiet times is disposed to regard his 
Muhammadan neighbour as belonging to a 



108 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

separate caste with which he has no com- 
munion, but which has as good a right to 
exist as have those Hindu castes with 
the members of which he does not eat 
or drink. The Muhammadan regards 
Hinduism as the religion of the country 
and as having on that account a title 
to respect. In some parts of India Hindus 
and Muhammadans are on quite friendly- 
terms. They will assist each other in their 
respective religious festivals and processions. 
They will occasionally worship at each others' 
shrines. But everywhere this happy state 
of things is not found. There are towns and 
districts where the two religions face each other 
like armies on a battle-field, and where the 
slightest provocation given by one side or the 
other will bring on furious riots and bloodshed. 
A cow slaughtered in the Hindu quarter, or a 
dead pig thrown into a Muhammadan mosque 
is the certain warning of coming trouble. 
It is then that the special function of British 
rule becomes apparent. It has to keep the 
peace of India. 

What is Hinduism ? What are its tenets 
and its sects ? How is it marked off from 
Buddhism or other indigenous religions, or 
from the various primitive beliefs that are 
grouped under the term " animism" ? These 
questions do not admit of clear and precise 
answers. If we were to ask a Hindu scholar. 



RELIGIONS 109 

a student of the Sanskrit sacred texts, he 
would refer us to these texts and tell us that 
they explain what Hinduism is. But this is 
only postponing the difficulty. For the texts 
cover an immense tract of time and do not 
speak with the same voice. We begin in the 
Vedas with the great " nature " gods — ^the 
Sun, the Sky, the Dawn, the Storm — ^and 
with simple sacrifices and oblations by which 
they are to be honoured by the householder. 
There is no trace in the Vedas of the belief 
in the transmigration of souls which is now 
a fundamental principle of Hindu religion. In 
the later text-books the "nature" gods give 
place to Brahma, Siva, Vishnu, and other 
major deities of the Hindu pantheon as we 
know it ; and the doctrines of caste and 
transmigration, the sanctity and superiority 
of the Brahman, the merit of sacrifice correctly 
performed by him, come to the front. Still 
later on in the early centuries of the Christian 
era great additions were made to the number of 
deities worshipped and extraordinary legends 
and myths to account for them were invented. 
Vishnu, as the god who preserved the world, 
was given many shapes and was described as 
having appeared to man in many forms. 
His two most popular incarnations are 
Rama, the hero prince of the Ramayana epic, 
and Krishna, one of the great characters in 
the Mahabharata. Rama and Krishna to 



110 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

this day count their worshippers by millions. 
There is hardly a Hindu peasant in upper India 
who is ignorant of these romantic personages 
or who fails to identify them with Vishnu. 
It is conjectured that in these additions to 
Hindu mythology and worship we have the 
process by which the indigenous races of India 
were brought under Brahmanical influence, 
and their deities admitted to honour and 
connected by means of myths with the Aryan 
gods. This explanation is certainly in 
harmony with the increased grossness and 
superstition found in the later text-books and 
manuals of popular Hinduism, and it is borne 
out by what actually takes place at the 
present day in the wilder parts of India. 
Accurate observers have described the steps 
by which an uncivilised forest tribe, whose 
beliefs are limited to vague ideas about ghosts 
and goblins and spirits dwelling in rocks and 
trees and streams, comes over to Brahmanism, 
bringing with it old superstitions and worship 
and retaining them under Hindu forms. 

The text-books therefore will not help us to 
define Hinduism, unless we are restricted to 
particular books, chosen either on account of 
their antiquity or of their contents. It 
may possibly be thought that the Vedas alone 
should be taken as the test of what Hinduism 
is. This test has often approved itself to 
Indian religious reformers, but its defect is 



RELIGIONS 111 

that it excludes at least nine-tenths of what 
Hinduism to-day accepts as fundamental. 
Reformers who appeal to the Vedas end by 
forming sects. Even if they and their 
communities continue Hindu in name they 
are put out of caste and regarded as 
unorthodox by the great mass of professing 
Hindus. 

The Vedas alone will not therefore serve 
at a test. Near to the Vedas in order of time 
are certain ancient and revered ritual books 
and commentaries, known as Brahmanas 
and Upanishads, which date back several 
centuries before the Christian era. Shall we 
find in them what Hinduism is? The 
fundamental ideas of Hinduism are certainly 
to be found there. But we are met with the 
difficulty that the Brahmanas have one voice 
and the Upanishads another. The Brahmanas 
are concerned with the ceremonies of sacrifice 
and with the blessings which a sacrifice 
correctly offered by a Brahman will bring 
to the offerer in this world and hereafter. 
The Upanishads teach the futility of sacrifice 
and the necessity for knowledge ; and the 
knowledge they teach is how the individual 
soul may escape from earthly existence by 
absorption into the world-soul. This world- 
soul (atman or brahma) is conceived as the 
eternal essence animating nature. The indi- 
vidual soul and the world-soul are identical. 



112 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

and correct knowledge according to the 
Upanishads consists in realising this. 

Thus in the earliest religious Hindu books 
following the Vedas there are two distinct 
religious systems, the one concerned with 
concrete gods and goddesses that required 
to be daily appeased through rites and 
sacrifices, with the veneration of Brahmans, 
and with their divine nature and priesthood ; 
the other holding all these things to be vanity 
and illusion, preaching the weariness of the 
flesh, and striving to escape from individual 
existence through the gateway of true 
knowledge. These two systems went their 
separate ways and increasingly diverged. 
The ceremonial religion grew more and more 
extravagant and grotesque. The reveries of 
the Upanishads hardened into a systematic 
theology, taking different forms in the hands 
of different teachers. These men developed 
the tremendous doctrines of karma and trans- 
migration. Karma literally means action, 
or what is brought about by action ; and 
transmigration implies an unbroken chain of 
existences. As a man soweth that shall he 
reap ; if not in his present life at all events 
in another life in some better or worse shape. 
Karma was thus the fate or destiny of man, 
and to make the best of it right knowledge 
and the dispelling of ignorance were required. 
The different teachers busied themselves with 



RELIGIONS 113 

providing the right knowledge. The best 
known and still most popular school, known 
as the Vedanta or "goal of the Veda,'' 
elaborated the immature thought of the 
Upanishads. It worked out the doctrine of 
maya or illusion. "There is one thing, 
Brahma ; there is nothing else " ; that is, 
God is all. There is no real universe, no 
reality of experience. What appears solid 
earth or pain or pleasure, are mere dreams. 
They are nightmares to be escaped from, 
and the only way of escape is by getting rid 
of all desire, and so breaking the chain of 
existence; the individual spirit will then 
merge into the universal spirit and so find 
reality. To the western mind this sounds 
very melancholy and unpractical. Another 
and later school of Hindu religious philosophy, 
that has had and still has great influence, 
is more akin to Christian thought. It held 
that individual souls were distinct from the 
world-soul ; it taught that man's error lay 
in want of faith or trust, not in ignorance ; 
and it placed his salvation, or release from 
successive existences, in faith or love of the 
supreme being. 

But it may be asked " Are not these specula- 
tions mere philosophies of the closet; have 
they anything to do with Hinduism as a 
religion ? " Strange to say they have. They 
are interwoven with the fabric of Hindu 



114 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

popular beliefs. They account for the re- 
signation and the mild pessimism of the Hindu 
mind. They have made transmigration and 
karma very real things to the humblest and 
most unlettered peasant. They have given 
him the idea that spirit is everywhere behind 
matter. He may worship many gods, demons 
and deified heroes ; but he dimly believes that 
they are part of a greater unity. In his 
actual observances he may be classed as a 
polytheist, one who has many gods ; but 
mentally he is a pantheist, one who sees God 
in everything. Sitting beneath a pipal or 
" sacred fig " tree the present writer has 
heard a peasant say " Parameshwar " (the 
lord of all) "is in this tree ; he is in the 
roots ; he is in the leaves ; he is everywhere 
in the world." The rustic spoke the thought 
of the Vedanta. Yet in his everyday obser- 
vances, his veneration of Brahmans, his 
pilgrimage to sacred rivers and holy shrines, 
he was an ordinary Hindu indistinguishable 
from the crowd. It may be added that the 
link between philosophic and popular Hindu- 
ism is supplied by the great epic poems of 
India, especially the Ramayana. Large por- 
tions of these poems reproduce the spiritual 
and speculative ideas of the early sages. An 
adaptation of the Ramayana made in the 
speech of the people by a genuine poet and 
religious reformer, Tulsi Das, at the end of 



RELIGIONS 115 

the sixteenth century, is the bible of the 
peasant in northern India. In telling the 
story of the hero prince Rama, the god 
Vishnu in human form, the author has brought 
in his own lofty conceptions of a personal god, 
and of reunion with him through passionate 
faith and devotion. Ignorant, superstitious, 
caste-ridden and idolatrous though the average 
Hindu is, he is not without glimpses of purer 
and more spiritual ideas. And to this fact 
and to the essentially religious cast of the 
Hindu mind is due the frequent rise in India 
of new sects and reformed beliefs. Any 
earnest, spiritually-minded teacher can count 
on a following of devoted disciples. The pity 
is that in such cases the new light should so 
speedily grow dim. The sect may live, but 
its beliefs and practices usually become as 
gross and superstitious as those of popular 
Hinduism. 

So far we have not discovered from the 
Brahmanic scriptures what Hinduism is. In 
them the boldest philosophic speculation 
goes hand in hand with popular polytheism 
of the crudest kind. Many attempts to de- 
fine Hinduism have been made. A Hindu 
authority defined it as " what the Hindus or 
a major portion of the Hindus do." A 
distinguished English authority described it 
as " the collection of rites, worships, beliefs, 
traditions and mythologies that are sanctioned 



116 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

by the sacred books and ordinances of the 
Brahmans, and are propagated by Brahmanic 
teaching." It has also been called " a 
tangled jungle of disorderly superstitions, 
ghosts and demons, demi-gods, and deified 
saints, household gods, tribal gods, universal 
gods, with their countless shrines and temples 
and the din of their discordant rites — deities 
who abhor a fly's death, and those who delight 
still in human victims." Popular Hinduism 
is thus something very different from our 
ordinary notion of a religion. It is largely a 
social system, founded no doubt on the Vedas 
and the post-Vedic scriptures, but with little 
real connection with them save on three or four 
points. These are veneration for Brahmans, 
the caste system, the doctrine of karma and 
transmigration of souls, and the holiness of 
the cow. But the basis of the whole fabric 
is the divine right of the Brahmans. " A man 
may disbelieve in the Hindu trinity ; he may 
invent new gods of his own, however foul and 
impure ; he may worship them with the most 
revolting orgies ; he may even abandon all 
belief in supernatural powers, and yet remain 
a Hindu. But he must reverence and feed 
the Brahmans, he must abide by caste rules 
and restrictions, he must preserve himself from 
ceremonial pollution, and from contact and 
communion with the unclean." 

It seems strange to us, to whom a church is 



RELIGIONS 117 

an organised community with a defined creed 
and an administrative body, to find that Hin- 
duism has none of these things. There is no 
pope or high priest or church council to 
pronounce decisions or prescribe rites. There 
is no ecclesiastical capital or centre. There 
are places noted for learned scholars or 
pandits, such as Benares, Muttra, or Tanjore ; 
and the collective opinion of these persons, if 
given, will carry weight among certain classes 
of Hindus within a certain radius. But 
that is all. Worshippers of Vishnu under 
any of his various forms — Krishna, Rama, 
Jagannath — -would not accept the ruling of 
Saivite pandits, that is, followers of Siva ; 
and vice versa. Nor is there any certain way 
of enforcing a decision. Thus Hinduism, so 
far as internal government goes, is a chaos. 
And as a result of this it is perpetually trans- 
forming itself, splitting up into sects, taking 
in new deities, adopting new forms of worship. 
Taking first the orthodox mass of Hindus, 
they roughly divide themselves into Saivites 
or adherents of Siva and Vishnuites or 
adherents of Vishnu. The division is not a 
hard and fast one, as a person may and often 
does worship both. But the division is 
important in this way, that it leads to sub- 
divisions. Thus the adherent of Siva or 
Mahadeo (the great god) is very likely to 
address himself to one of Siva's goddess 



118 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

wives, of whom there are many, following in 
each case the appropriate ritual. The god 
himself is satisfied with a few flowers and a 
little water. His wife, the grim and savage 
goddess Kali, whose debased worship is 
popular in Bengal, requires the blood of 
victims. In the same part of India other 
female deities are worshipped with obscene 
and abominable rites. Vishnuites may do 
honour to Vishnu under any of his numerous 
human shapes. In Oudh he is Rama, the 
brave hero of romance. In Muttra he is 
Krishna, the amorous prince of cowherds. In 
Orissa he is the famous Jagannath, the " lord 
of the world." The last case is instructive as 
illustrating the way in which a purely local 
god is taken over by Brahmans and identified 
as one of the great gods of classical Hinduism. 
Jagannath's round shapeless head and armless 
stumps recall the rude idol of some primitive 
tribe, and the legends about him are evidently 
of local origin. But by the simple process 
of making him one of Vishnu's numerous 
appearances on earth, the primitive god and 
his exploits have been placed to the credit of 
Brahmanism. 

Besides the great gods and goddesses of 
Brahmanic tradition rural India has its own 
local divinities. Those who know the Indian 
peasant say that he is quite as much concerned 
with the unnamed powers of his village as 



RELIGIONS 119 

with the recognised deities. These " god- 
lings," as they are called, are purely local, 
often without distinct names or functions. 
Their presence is denoted by a rough idol 
or a single block of stone or wood placed under 
a tree or rock, or on some high place. It is 
daubed with vermilion colour as a token of 
reverence. There the women will make 
simple offerings of milk or fruit, or light a 
lamp at night. Some are kindly spirits who 
watch over the village. Others are harmful 
and have to be propitiated. But whether 
kindly or harmful they are closer to the 
peasant than the great gods of the Brahmans, 
and are bound up with his house, his fields, 
and his cattle. They can also be worshipped 
without priestly help. They have come 
down to him from primitive times when as yet 
there were no Vedic scriptures and Brahmanic 
ritual. They represent the belief of uncivil- 
ised man in an unseen company of spirits 
and ghosts, peopling all the objects about him. 
They are old pagan superstitions, which he 
retains along with a vague belief in the Vedas, 
a very real reverence for Brahmans, and a 
distant respect for the great gods who can 
only be worshipped with their aid. 

Such is Hinduism in its crudest forms. The 
higher placed the Hindu is and the more 
honourable his caste, the more closely will he 
follow the rites prescribed by Brahman priests 



120 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

and place himself under the rule of life which 
they approve. He will hear the shastras or 
sacred texts read though he may not under- 
stand them, he will give gifts to Brahmans, 
he will visit holy places which Siva or Vishnu 
or some incarnation of the latter honours with 
his presence, he will bathe in the sacred 
Ganges on appointed days, and he will be 
scrupulously exact in what he eats or drinks 
or touches, lest he be defiled. There is no 
congregational worship or " going to church," 
and set religious exercises are few. But 
ritual enters into his daily life to an extent 
inconceivable to us. Among the elect of 
the population who are versed in the Vedic 
tradition, and in the religious philosophy 
of the Vedanta or other orthodox schools, 
purer forms of belief and worship are found. 
Such men condemn the practices around 
them as debased and superstitious ; they 
regard Brahma the creator, Vishnu the 
preserver, and Siva the destroyer as but 
three aspects of the supreme spirit, to 
be worshipped by meditation, holy hymns 
and extreme sanctity of life. In many 
Brahman households of southern India this 
austere and learned orthodoxy may be found. 
Scattered through the country there are 
sects, often large and influential, which 
neglect or deny the regular gods of Hinduism, 
or refuse to acknowledge the supremacy and 



RELIGIONS 121 

accept the ministrations of Brahmans. These 
are unorthodox sects. Whether they are 
outside Hinduism or not depends on circum- 
stances. In the south of India the sect of 
the Lingayats, now numbering several millions 
of persons, rejected Brahmans and caste 
restrictions some centuries ago. They wor- 
ship Siva but they have their own ritual and 
their own priesthood. They are unorthodox, 
but they are reckoned as Hindus. They 
represent dissenters who broke away from 
orthodox Hinduism on the point of Brahmanic 
supremacy. Many other sects have a similar 
origin. The inferior classes, for instance, 
cannot but feel that they have a very small 
place in Brahmanic Hinduism. The lowest 
castes may not enter the temples of Siva or 
Vishnu. They are not recognised as Hindus. 
Consequently, if a religious reformer arises, 
preaching that all men are equal and offering 
a religion in which the Brahman has no pride 
of place, the common people hear him gladly. 
At no time has India been without such 
teachers. 

British rule, bringing with it western 
knowledge new standards of morality and 
new social ideas, has had its effect on the 
old established religions of India. Among 
the educated classes some have cut themselves 
completely adrift from Hindu philosophy and 
theology. Others have striven to reform 



122 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

Hinduism from within. Thus originated the 
movements known as the Brahmo Samaj and 
the Arya Somaj. The Brahmo Samaj is now 
an old society. It has been described as an 
" anaemic religion," a weak blend of Christian 
and Vedic ideas. It rejects caste, the purdah 
system and other trammels inconvenient to 
modern life, and it provides a morality and 
a reformed worship acceptable to educated 
and travelled Bengali families. But it has not 
appealed to the masses, and the professing 
community is very small. 

The Arya Somaj is a younger and much 
more robust movement. It has its roots in 
Hindu philosophy and Hindu religious ideas. 
It is actively opposed to Christianity. It 
preaches social and religious reform, but it 
takes its stand on the Vedas and professes 
to be merely a return to the primitive religion 
of the Aryans. Its missionaries appeal to 
Indian national sentiment. Though it teaches 
belief in one supreme being, and condemns 
pilgrimages, idol worship, bathing in sacred 
streams and other ceremonial observances, 
it deals gently with the institution of caste 
and accepts the doctrine of successive re-births 
or transmigration. In these and other ways 
it avoids too sharp a breach with popular 
Hinduism. It is an endeavour to promote 
reform on Indian lines, and its activities have 
on occasions extended into politics. Its 



RELIGIONS 123 

members belong mostly to the educated 
middle classes in the towns of northern 
India, and their numbers have increased 
rapidly in recent years. It is a genuine 
movement of a very interesting kind, though 
in the judgment of some observers it is re- 
actionary and mischievous. 

We may now turn to three religions which 
are not included in Hinduism, but which 
drew their inspiration from it. These are 
Sikhism, Buddhism, and Jainism. 

Sikhism as a distinct creed is comparatively 
modern. Its leading doctrines — ^the divine 
unity, the brotherhood of man, the rejection 
of caste and the uselessness of idol worship — 
have been preached in India for many centuries 
by a long and distinguished line of Hindu 
religious reformers. They were not novel when 
they took root among the sturdy peasan- 
try of the eastern Punjab in the fifteenth 
century. " Sikh " means a disciple, and 
" guru," the name given by the Sikhs to their 
spiritual leaders, means " teacher." Their 
first gurus kept strictly within the pale of 
Hinduism. But the savage persecution which 
the later gurus and their disciples underwent 
from the Muhammadans drew the Sikhs to- 
gether as a separate community with a written 
body of doctrine and distinctive observances. 
They became a military sect and a political 
power. Since the Sikh empire vanished, the 



124 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

tendency among them has been towards 
Brahmanic Hinduism. They are Hindus, yet 
Hindus with a difference. 

Buddhism and Jainism are not among the 
religions that influence the Indian peoples. 
Buddhism prevails in Burma ; but in India 
proper it is found only among Mongolian 
races in parts of the Himalayan region 
bordering on Tibet, and among them in a most 
debased and superstitious form. Jainism is 
professed by a comparatively small sect, and 
it tends to shade oft into ordinary Hinduism. 
Many Jains employ Brahmans in their 
domestic worship, venerate the cow, and often 
worship in Hindu temples. Jainism and 
Buddhism have much in common, and up to 
recent years Jainism was believed to be an 
offshoot of Buddhism. It is now known that 
it originated independently of though at the 
same time as Buddhism ; that is, in the 
sixth century before Christ. Buddhism, as it 
was taught by its great founder, Gautama 
Buddha, was an austere, resigned philosophy. 
He taught that existence was an evil, and that 
the way to break the chain of successive 
existences lay in stifling personal desire. 
Thus arose the famous doctrine of nirvana, or 
extinction as the flame of a lamp. Nirvana 
was to be reached, not by rites or ceremonies, 
priestly powers or gods, but by self-control 
and compassion for others. The marvel is 



RELIGIONS 125 

that out of this austere philosophy should 
have came a world-religion, a religion that is 
professed by one-third of the human race. 
How this came about lies outside the scope 
of this book, though it forms one of the most 
interesting chapters in the history of religions. 
But two remarks of a general kind may be 
made. Buddhism, as a religion, is not the 
same thing as Gautama's philosophy. Every- 
where it permits and encourages the venera- 
tion, if not worship, of Gautama and other 
holy personages ; and in most countries it is 
as corrupt and mechanical as the Brahmanism 
against which its founder revolted. Secondly, 
its professed adherents with hardly an excep- 
tion hold it in conjunction with other and 
more intimate beliefs. Burmese Buddhism 
is said to be a thin veneer of philosophy laid 
over a main structure of demon worship. 
" Buddhism supplies the superficial polish. 
In the hour of great heart searchings the 
Burman falls back on his primaeval beliefs." 
Buddhism in short is a formal system of duty, 
morality and benevolence. In practice it is 
supplemented from other sources. But not- 
withstanding its lack of emotion and warmth 
it has unmistakably marked, and in the main 
for good, the character of the peoples that 
have come under its influence. The Indian 
caste system and the degraded position as- 
signed in Hinduism to women, to mention two 



126 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

matters only, are impossible in a Buddhist 
country. 

If the people of Burma were not Buddhists, 
their spirit and demon beliefs would cause 
them to be classed as " animists." The 
term " animism " has been invented to cover 
the medley of superstitions which are found 
among rude and primitive races. It includes 
the worship of inanimate objects, such as 
rocks and stones, believed to possess in 
themselves some kind of mysterious power. 
It includes the belief in the existence of souls 
or spirits moving about the world, which can 
take up their abode in some object and make 
that object something to be worshipped or 
used to protect individuals. One spirit pre- 
sides over cholera, another over smallpox, 
another over cattle disease. " Some haunt 
rocks, others haunt trees, others are associated 
with rivers, whirlpools, waterfalls, or strange 
pools hidden in the depths of the hills." 
There are many hill and forest tribes in India 
whose beliefs are of this kind, and who are 
entirely outside the pale of Hinduism. They 
are accordingly classed as Animists. Other 
tribes there are a little more advanced, who 
are learning the rudiments of Hinduism under 
the guidance of some stray Brahman priest, 
and are growing ashamed of their old obser- 
vances. When the census enumerator comes 
round they may possibly class themselves as 



RELIGIONS 127 

Hindus. The census return of ten million 
Animists very inadequately represents the 
number of persons in India whose real beliefs 
are of this character. In fact, between 
Animism and Hinduism there is no hard and 
fast line. The one melts imperceptibly into 
the other. We have seen that the ordinary 
Hindu peasant, while worshipping the regular 
deities of Brahmanism, performs rites to the 
rustic " godlings " of his village. These 
" godlings " represent the primitive super- 
stitions of India. Popular Hinduism, in short, 
is saturated with animistic beliefs. 

Animism of late years has received great 
attention, as the superstitions and customs 
which it covers take us back to an early stage 
in the history of man, and throw light on the 
still more primitive state of which there is 
no record, and on his subsequent advance. 
In themselves they are neither interesting nor 
instructive. Save to the professed student 
the savage or semi-savage is apt to be weari- 
some. 

Turning now to Muhammadanism, we 
may note that it does not present the specu- 
lative problems of purely Indian religions. 
It has had a great influence on India, but for 
India of to-day its interest is political rather 
than religious. Religions in the East take 
the place of nationalities. The seventy 
millions of professing Muhammadans in India 



128 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

are for many purposes a nation. In adminis- 
trative matters the British Government has 
constantly to consider Indian Moslems as a 
separate community, with interests distinct 
from and often conflicting with those of the 
rest of the population. 

Of the doctrines of Muhammadanism little 
need be here said. Its history as a world 
religion and its theological tenets have been 
dealt with in another volume of this series. 
In India it presents some peculiarities, owing 
to the extreme ignorance which prevails 
among the Moslem population in some parts 
of India, and to the reaction upon Indian 
Musulmans of Hindu religions and observances. 
In the country to the north-east of Calcutta 
over twenty million persons, representing a 
vast majority of the agricultural population, 
are nominally Muhammadans. They are as 
fanatical as they are ignorant. They are 
easily stirred up to do battle with Hindus 
in the name of Allah, but of the Koran or even 
the leading principles of Islam they know 
little or nothing. Their practical religion is 
a compound of animistic superstitions and 
Brahmanical customs. They are almost as 
much infected with caste prejudices as their 
Hindu neighbours. In the Punjab, where 
rural society is organised on the tribal system, 
it is a common thing to find one section of the 
tribe Hindu and the other section Musulman. 



RELIGIONS 129 

Thus there are Hindu Rajputs and Jats and 
Muhammadan Rajputs and Jats. The 
Muhammadan sections, for all social, tribal 
and other purposes, were till recently exactly 
as much Rajputs or Jats as their Hindu 
brethren. Nowadays the tendency every- 
where in India is towards stricter observance 
of religious distinctions. Of the Musulman 
Rajput the following graphic picture has been 
drawn : " His social customs are unaltered, 
his tribal restrictions are unrelaxed, his rules 
of marriage and inheritance unchanged ; and 
almost the only difference is that he shaves 
his scalp lock and the upper edge of his 
moustache, repeats the Muhammadan creed 
in a mosque, and adds the Musulman to the 
Hindu wedding ceremony. The local saints 
and deities still have their shrines even in 
villages held wholly by Musulmans and are 
still regularly worshipped by the majority, 
though the practice is gradually declining. 
The Hindu family priests are still kept up and 
consulted as of old, and the Brahmans are 
still fed on the usual occasions, and in many 
cases still officiate at weddings side by side 
with the Muhammadan priest." It does not 
follow that the conversion of these Punjab 
tribesmen some centuries ago was skin-deep, 
or that it would not be difficult to recall them 
to Hinduism. Such an idea would not occur 
to either the Muhammadan or to the Hindu. 



130 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

The Muhammadan, though his knowledge 
of doctrine may be of the scantiest kind, is 
intensely proud of his creed. To the Hindu 
a Muhammadan as such is casteless, or is 
treated as belonging to a separate caste, and 
the gulf is unbridgeable by conversion. The 
usages that are found among Muhammadan 
tribesmen in the Punjab really illustrate 
the fact that Hinduism is more a social than 
a religious system. In the easy-going camara- 
derie of the countryside it does not strike 
the Musulman Rajput or Jat that the Hindu 
usages he has adopted are inconsistent with 
his belief in " Allah and Muhammad His 
Prophet." 

Muhammadanism in the towns and among 
the educated classes is less affected by Hindu 
practices and superstitions. Its attitude to 
Hinduism is also less friendly. In the towns 
the two religions tend to draw off into separate 
camps. In most towns the Muhammadan 
quarter is separate from that of the Hindus. 
The Brahman priests and the Muhammadan 
mullahs or preachers are ready to improve 
any occasion for a quarrel, and strife once 
aroused is not easily allayed. Among town- 
dwelling Muhammadans there is not that 
dense ignorance of Islamic history and 
doctrine that prevails in the villages. But an 
intelligent and in any way adequate knowledge 
of these subjects is possessed by very few 



RELIGIONS 131 

Indian Musulmans. Matters in this respect 
are improving, as education is becoming 
more general among the Muhammadan popu- 
lation of India. Until recently the backward- 
ness in this respect of Indian Musulmans has 
made them to be lightly esteemed in the 
Moslem world. 

It is a singular fact that though there are 
more Muhammadans in India than in any 
other country or empire, Indian Musulmans 
have at no time exerted an influence corre- 
sponding to their numbers either in India or 
upon the Islamic world at large. No great 
Islamic movement has originated in India. 
Indian Moslems are content, if of the Sunni 
sect, as the majority are, to look up to the 
Sultan of Turkey as their spiritual head ; 
and, if Shias, to turn for guidance to Persian 
theologians and mystics. The reasons of 
this must be sought in history, India has 
never been a part of Islam. There were 
Muhammadan dynasties for centuries in 
southern India and for nearly two hundred 
years the Mughal empire was seated at 
Delhi ; but the Muhammadan domination 
was superficial. The population remained 
Hindu, and the administration was to a great 
extent conducted by Hindu officials. The 
typical Islamic State should be religious 
throughout ; a theocracy satisfied with 
nothing less than the dominance of Islamic 



132 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

belief and practice. But the Mughal empire 
was a very secular affair. Babar and his 
Turkish amirs were men of the sword and the 
wine-cup. His successors were lax Musul- 
mans in doctrine and practice. The greatest 
of them, Akbar, tried to substitute for the 
religion of Muhammad a pantheistic worship 
with himself as high-priest, in which Hindus 
and Moslems could join. The empire was 
wrecked by the futile attempt of Aurangzeb, 
the " great Muhammadan puritan," as he has 
been called, to establish a true Islamic state. 
In his failure the weakness of the nominal 
Muhammadan supremacy was revealed. In 
learning and peaceful pursuits the Muhamma- 
dan invaders and their converts were inferior 
to the Hindus. They remained as they began, 
men of war and action, with little aptitude 
for letters. In the prolonged anarchy of the 
eighteenth century, when the Mughal empire 
fell, there was still work and a living for 
them. But the fighting, though abundant, 
was of an ignoble order, in the service of 
half-Hinduised chiefs or of rough adven- 
turers whose ambitions were limited to 
plunder. The British came and established 
peace, and thereby took away from the 
Muhammadans their best occupation. As 
British rule became more complex and more 
refined, the Muhammadan civil official had 
to give way to the better educated, more 



RELIGIONS 133 

industrious, and more pliant Hindu. When 
schools and colleges were established on a 
secular basis for the teaching of English 
and western sciences, the Muhammadans 
hung back while the Brahmans and the Hindu 
writer castes rushed in. Small wonder is it 
that among other secrets which the earthquake 
of the sepoy mutiny of 1857 revealed, the 
Muhammadan community was found to be 
depressed, discontented, and to a large extent 
actively or passively disloyal. 

To readjust the balance between the two 
communities, to allay the apprehensions of 
the Muhammadans and to reconcile them 
to British rule, thus became a problem of 
the highest interest and importance. How 
pressing it was thought to be may be gathered 
from the title of a book published in 1871 by 
Sir William Hunter, which excited great 
attention at the time: Our Indian Musul- 
mans : Are they bound in conscience to rebel 
against the Queen? He described them as 
a source of chronic danger to the British 
power in India ; and he examined at length 
the causes of the " spirit of unrest " which 
possessed them. No writer of Sir William 
Hunter's calibre would now dream of asking 
and discussing such a question. The problem 
may, therefore, be regarded as no longer 
pressing. Why this should be so is due to 
three causes. First, to the happy effect of 



184 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

the measures taken by the British Government 
for the improvement of Muhammadan educa- 
tion and for securing to Musulmans a fair 
share in the public service. Secondly, to the 
rise of a school of liberal-minded reformers 
in the Muhammadan community itself, frankly 
accepting British dominion in India as a lawful 
government on account of its just and tolerant 
principles, and welcoming western education. 
Thirdly, to the apprehensions of the Muham- 
madan community that Hindu ambitions 
and the programme of Hindu politicians 
implied Hindu supremacy. These apprehen- 
sions were quickened by the measures 
taken in 1909 by Lord Minto and Lord 
Morley to liberalise the Indian administrative 
system by associating the people more closely 
with the government. No question in connec- 
tion with this scheme of constitutional reform 
caused greater difficulty or led to sharper 
controversy than the claims preferred by the 
Muhammadan community for separate and 
adequate representation in the new councils. 
In the end, as the Muhammadans themselves 
admit, their claims were very liberally dealt 
with. The apprehensions behind these claims 
still exist and will affect Indian politics for 
some time to come. It is not surprising, 
though it may be regretted, that Muhamma- 
dans regard themselves as a separate com- 
munity with separate interests. In Europe 



RELIGIONS 135 

we expect that sectarian differences, however 
acute, will be subordinated to nationality. 
In India religion takes the place of nationality. 
As Lord Morley said in the House of Lords 
on the second reading of the Indian Councils 
Bill, " the difference between Muhammadan- 
ism and Hinduism is not a mere difference of 
articles of religious faith or dogma. It is a 
difference in life, in tradition, in history, in 
all the social things as well as articles of 
belief that constitute a community." 



CHAPTER VI 

ECONOMIC LIFE 

Few subjects have been more often discussed 
or have led to sharper controversies than 
the economic condition of the people of India. 
Are they much worse off than the population 
of the British Isles ? Are they becoming 
poorer or richer ? How far is their in- 
creasing poverty or increasing prosperity 
due to the government under which they 
live? 

Nothing is more difficult than to gauge the 
economic condition of the inhabitants of a 
foreign country by external circumstances. 
Sir Frederick Treves, in his account 
of a tour in the East, has recorded the first im- 
pressions made on him by India and its people. 
He speaks of the multitude of men, women and 
children " a little below the most meagre 
comfort and a little above the nearest reach 
of starvation." The country, he says, " looks 
homeless." It leaves " an impression of 
poorness and melancholy." " The villages 
136 



ECONOMIC LIFE 137 

are piteous clusters of mud walls, daubed 
round the sides of a thick pond in the bare 
earth." On the other hand, Sir John 
Strachey, recording the results of a long 
acquaintance with the country in his India, 
Its Administration and Progress, wrote : 
" There can be no question that in times of 
ordinary prosperity there is, in proportion to 
the population, more want and extreme misery 
in our own country than in India." The 
Indian peasant's cottage, he said, " affords 
clean and, according to his ideas, comfortable 
shelter. He has not much clothing, but much 
is not wanted ; in the winter he suffers little 
from the cold. In ordinary circumstances 
he has sufficient food of the only kind he 
desires, the produce of his own fields or 
garden, his millets and lentils, his barley or 
his rice, his much-appreciated ghee made 
from the milk of cows or buffaloes, the 
vegetables, spices and condiments of which 
in a hot climate there is no lack, and as much 
tobacco, sugar and sweetmeats as he can 
afford to buy. . . . His wife has often 
her holiday attire and her silver ornaments, 
for after providing the necessities of life there 
is frequently something left for simple luxuries 
and for buying jewellery, the latter a common 
form of hoarding." 

Assuming that there is an element of truth 
in both these accounts, we see that they 



138 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

describe a state of society which to English 
eyes is almost inconceivably simple and 
elementary, destitute of comforts and con- 
veniences that we are accustomed to regard 
as essential to civilised life. And yet this 
society is not uncivilised, is not incom- 
patible with home affections and interests, 
and is not devoid of simple pleasures and 
enjoyments. 

If we turn from personal observations to 
records of a more general kind, we observe 
some broad economic facts which require 
to be taken note of and accounted for ; the 
more so as they seem at first sight to be 
inconsistent with each other. On the one 
hand we see a standard of living and a rate of 
wages which to Europeans seem incredibly 
low, and we frequently hear of disastrous 
droughts and famines and of measures of 
relief on an enormous scale. On the other 
hand, we are told on good authority that the 
foreign trade of India is rapidly growing ; 
that year by year there is a larger import of 
commodities ; that the goods and passenger 
traffic of the railways steadily increases ; 
that irrigation is extending ; that large 
industries are springing up and crying for 
labour ; that the population absorbs large 
quantities of gold and silver ; that it is better 
dressed and better housed than in former 
days, and that in years when the crops are 



ECONOMIC LIFE 139 

poor and trade is bad, it shows unexpected 
ability to support itself. How are these 
anomalies to be explained ? 

Let us look somewhat more closely into the 
facts. The total population of India, includ- 
ing that of the protected native states, is 
three hundred and fifteen millions. Three- 
fourths of this vast population is supported 
by agriculture. The area under cultivation 
is not accurately known, as the returns from 
the native States are incomplete. But we 
shall not be far wrong if we assume that there 
is less than one acre of cultivated land per 
head of total population, and not more than 
one acre and a quarter per head for that 
portion of the population which is directly 
supported by agriculture. One more fact 
must be mentioned to bring out the full 
significance of these figures. Not only does 
the land of India provide food for this great 
population, for with the exception of some 
sugar no food is imported from other countries, 
but a very considerable portion of it is set 
apart for growing produce which is exported. 
India supplies the whole world with jute. 
Its cotton crop is the second largest in the 
world. It sends abroad very large quantities 
of rice, wheat and oil-seeds. In fact, it pays 
its bill for imports of merchandise and treasure, 
and discharges its other international debts, 
mainly by the sale of agricultural produce. 



140 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

Subtracting the land thus utilised for supply- 
ing foreign markets from the total area 
under cultivation, we shall find that what is 
left over does not represent more than two- 
thirds of an acre per head of the total Indian 
population. India, therefore, feeds and to 
some extent clothes its population from what 
two-thirds of an acre per head can produce. 
There is probably no country in the world 
where the land is required to do so much. 
That it manages to discharge the heavy task 
put upon it is due to three things. First, 
the great fertility of large tracts where either 
the rainfall is abundant or irrigation is 
provided ; secondly, the unremitting labour 
and skill of the Indian cultivator ; and 
thirdly, great economy in the consumption of 
food. 

It may also be inferred that the average 
income of the peasant cultivators is very 
small. The net profit obtainable from an 
acre of land seems to us altogether inadequate 
for one person's support ; and our conclusion 
would be the same if we take a family of five, 
namely, two adults and three children, and a 
holding of five acres, as the unit. But accord- 
ing to Indian ideas and a traditional standard 
of very thrifty and frugal living, five acres 
of good irrigated land will support such a 
family comfortably. The peasant has no 
labour bill, as he and his family work the 



ECONOMIC LIFE 141 

holding. He pays no rent for his cottage of 
sun-dried bricks and thatch, which he himself 
builds, and which he from time to time 
rebuilds or repairs. He pays no rates or 
taxes. If he owns his land he will have to pay 
land revenue to the State ; and this represents 
a moderate tithe of about a twelfth or less 
of the produce. If he is a tenant-farmer, the 
rent wHl be at least double the amount of the 
land-tax. Of his other cash outgoings the 
cost and feed of a yoke of oxen will probably 
be the largest item. The death of a bullock, 
as may be imagined, is a great calamity, 
trying severely his resources or even necessi- 
tating resort to the money-lender. But a 
five-acre holding of good land, well worked, 
will yield enough to satisfy all these demands, 
provide simple food for the family, and a 
modicum of spare cash for clothes and other 
household expenses. If he is in debt to the 
grain-dealer or bania, he may be hard put 
to it to make both ends meet. But if he is 
clear of debt, as not infrequently happens, 
he will probably accumulate rupees, which 
he will either bury as a hoard or convert 
into jewellery. 

But all the land in India is not good and 
irrigated, and every peasant's holding is not 
a five-acre plot. Some peasants hold con- 
siderably more than five acres ; consequently 
others hold less. And when we get down to 



142 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

the man who holds less than five acres of land 
and that of poor quality, then there is want 
and a hard struggle for existence. That 
man and his household are poor even in the 
Indian sense of the term. 

Below the peasant class there is a large 
class of landless folk, who also find support 
from the land by working for the well-to-do 
cultivators in return for a daily or monthly 
wage. They form a well-recognised part 
of the village community, and poor and 
poorly remunerated as they no doubt are, it 
is the traditional duty as well as the interest 
of the landholding class to see them through 
bad times. There are also other residents 
of the village who do not actually cultivate 
land, but yet are indirectly supported from 
it. Such are the village potter, the village 
blacksmith and carpenter who make ploughs 
and other agricultural implements, the barber, 
the cobbler or leather- worker, the washerman, 
the watchman. All these receive doles of 
fixed amounts from the grain heap at harvest 
time, and other dues and perquisites. 
Throughout the year a stream of charity 
flows unceasingly from all the households 
in proportion to their several means. The 
unostentaliou-s benevolence of all grades 
of society is one of the most beautiful traits 
of Indian life. It is not confined to the 
countryside, though it finds its best expression 



ECONOMIC LIFE 143 

there where each village has its own infirm 
and aged poor, its own destitute orphans, 
its own beggars and even its own " work-shy " 
impostors. In the West the poor-law and the 
state have largely taken over charity of this 
kind. In the East it is still a religious duty, 
and along with the strength and sanctity of 
the ties of family and caste it makes a poor- 
law unnecessary. In no respect does India 
differ more profoundly from England than 
in this. Save in time of drought and 
scarcity there is no public system of poor 
relief. 

No one would pretend that this Indian 
village life is ideal, or unaccompanied by 
much that is distressing to the humane mind 
to contemplate. The wastage of life, especi- 
ally child and infant life, is great. Diseases 
which in England have given way before 
sanitary and medical science, improved dwell- 
ings and better habits of life, stalk abroad. 
Plague, the mysterious and loathsome disease 
which the English people knew in the four- 
teenth century as the Black Death, has in 
India in fourteen years carried off seven 
million people, or more than the whole popu- 
lation of " greater " London. Cholera, small- 
pox, malarial fevers are endemic in the 
country, and collectively destroy lives by the 
million. The " preventable mortality " is 
in one sense great, but it is not " preventable " 



144 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

by any ordinary means within the power of 
the state. European principles of medicine 
are represented by the public hospitals and 
dispensaries which are dotted over the country 
and which relieve a vast amount of sickness 
and suffering. But the great majority of 
Indian people die without medical aid. 
That the population continues to increase 
is a sign that the forces of life are stronger 
than those of destruction. But the resigned 
pessimism and quiet melancholy which char- 
acterise the religions and the mental outlook 
of the people, and which seem to brood over 
the landscape and infect the atmosphere, 
are not without a physical basis. 

Such in broad outline is the structure of 
rural life throughout India. It is the life 
led by nine-tenths of the population. Only 
the remaining tenth live in towns with over 
five thousand inhabitants. We hear of the 
great cities of India but they can almost be 
counted on the fingers of two hands. There p 
are not ten cities and towns in India with 
populations exceeding two hundred thousand. 
Of these four are maritime towns whose 
creation is largely due to British capital and 
commerce, four (Delhi, Lahore, Lucknow, 
Ahmadabad) are the capitals of former 
dynasties, while one (Benares) is the holy 
city of Hinduism. Contrast this with England, 
where ninety per cent, of the population live 



ECONOMIC LIFE 145 

in towns containing ten thousand inhabitants 
and upwards, and twenty-five per cent, in 
towns with over two hundred and fifty 
thousand inhabitants. In England agricul- 
ture is only one of six or seven great industries, 
while the wealth it yields is small relatively 
to the aggregate national income. In India 
outside Bombay and Calcutta wealth where it 
exists is derived from the rentals of large 
estates. In northern India, especially in 
Bengal and the United Provinces of Agra and 
Oudh, there are great landlords whose incomes 
are large even in the English sense and whose 
estates extend to many thousands of acres. 
They are intermediaries between the state, 
the traditional owner of the soil in India as 
in other eastern countries, and the peasant 
or the village community. How they came 
into existence is a story too long to tell here. 
Some of them represent chieftainships, just 
as some Scottish landlords to-day are the 
representatives of former chiefs of highland 
clans. Others are the descendants of revenue 
farmers who in the days of the Mughal 
government were granted tracts of country 
on condition of collecting the land assessment 
from the cultivators and accounting for the 
proceeds to the imperial treasury. In which- 
ever of these ways their present estates 
originated, their position relatively to the 
cultivators has been enormously strengthened 



146 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

and their wealth increased by the advent of 
British rule and English legal ideas of land- 
ownership. Under native rule they were 
treated well if they were allowed to keep one- 
tenth of what they collected from the culti- 
vators. Under British rule they are allowed 
to retain about one-half ; and where as in 
Bengal their payments to the state have 
been permanently fixed, they have been 
greatly enriched by the rise of rents and the 
extension of cultivation in their estates. 
Whatever view be taken of the general 
considerations for or against tenancy laws 
for the protection of tenants and for limiting 
the power of the landlords, the claim of the 
Indian cultivators to such protection is 
undeniably strong. The claim has been 
recognised by the Indian government, which 
has repeatedly legislated on their behalf. In 
every province the powers of the landlord to 
raise his tenant's rent or to evict him are now 
closely restricted by law. 

We have incidentally mentioned " the 
village community," and have described it 
as a self-contained society, having its group 
of cultivators, its field labourers, its village 
artisans and officials and its grain dealer and 
money lender. The Indian village community, 
with its bond of joint responsibility and its 
curious customs about the common lands and 
about the distribution of the arable land. 



ECONOMIC LIFE 147 

has been the subject of much learned dis- 
quisition. Its strength and power of survival 
in troublous times have also excited great 
admiration. Sir Charles Metcalfe, a very- 
distinguished Indian administrator, writ- 
ing in 1830 of Indian village communities 
said, " They seem to last where nothing 
else lasts. Dynasty after dynasty tumbles 
down ; revolution succeeds revolution ; Hindu, 
Pathan, Mughal, Maratha, Sikh, English, are 
all masters in turn ; but the village com- 
munities remain the same. In times of 
trouble they arm and fortify themselves ; 
a hostile army passes through the country; 
the village communities collect their cattle 
within their walls, and let the enemy pass 
unprovoked. If plunder and devastation be 
directed against themselves and the force 
employed be irresistible, they flee to friendly 
villages at a distance ; but when the storm 
is over they return and resume their occupa- 
tions. ... A generation may pass away 
but the succeeding generation will return. . . 
This union of the village communities, each 
one forming a separate little state itself, has, 
I conceive, contributed more than any other 
cause to the preservation of the people of 
India through all the revolutions and changes 
which they have suffered, and is in a high 
degree conducive to their happiness, and to 
the enjoyment of a great portion of freedom 



148 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

and independence." The Indian village com- 
munity is obviously an ancieiit institution. 
It takes us back to days when the unit of 
society was the real or fictitiously enlarged 
family under the rule of the nearest direct 
descendant in the male line of a reputed 
common ancestor. But as Sir. Theodore 
MoRisoN has pointed out in his Economic 
Transition of India, the peculiar features of 
the Indian village community have existed in 
other countries and can be assigned to certain 
economic causes. Thus in ancient France 
village communities were jointly liable for 
the payment of the King's taxes and appor- 
tioned the amount among the individual 
members. They also had village watchmen 
and village herdsmen who were paid by con- 
tributions from the peasant occupiers in 
proportion to their respective incomes. 
The economic independence and self-sufficing 
organisation of the Indian village have 
resulted from its isolation in the past, and this 
isolation was due to poor and unsafe communi- 
cations. Under the native governments there 
were no high roads for wheeled traffic and no 
means of marketing bulky and perishable 
commodities. Travelling was also unsafe, 
for there were no police, and war and brigand- 
age were the normal condition of the country. 
Each village had to stand alone, and required 
its own staff of servants, labourers and 



ECONOMIC LIFE 149 

artisans. ' The population was distributed 
among isolated villages, and this prevented 
the efficient distribution of labour. Every 
European country has passed through the 
same phase. But whereas in Europe the 
transition was made and local isolation broken 
down one hundred or one hundred and fifty 
years ago, in India the change did not com- 
mence until the middle of the nineteenth 
century. It is only within the last thirty years 
that railways have become at all widespread in 
India, and good roads were few fifty years 
ago. The isolated and economically inde- 
pendent village has thus survived in India 
long after its disappearance from Europe. 
It is the landmark of an archaic system of 
society which is only now beginning to pass 
away. "A modern town," Sir Theodoke 
Moris ON wi*ites, " such as the bulk of the 
English people live in, depends for its very 
existence from week to week upon a compli- 
cated system of distant exchanges, and the 
characteristic of the modern structure of 
society is the interdependence of the different 
industrial units ; the characteristic of the 
archaic economy is the isolation and the 
independence of the village which is the 
industrial unit of that type of society." We 
have had experience of the confusion and 
industrial paralysis produced in England by 
a three days' partial railway strike. In India 



150 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

all the railways might stop for a month 
without disturbing the even tenor of the life 
of many a village community. 

We are now in a position to appreciate the 
significance of " famine " in India. A 
country that depends almost entirely on 
agriculture carries its eggs in one basket. 
If the crops are bad, its one industry ceases 
to produce and everybody feels the effect. 
Indian agriculture depends, as has already 
been explained, on the seasonal or " monsoon " 
rains, and these rains occasionally are insuffi- 
cient or fail entirely. Sometimes the failure 
is confined to a small tract of country : at 
other times a vast area is involved. But on 
no one occasion have the rains failed over the 
whole continent. This last fact is important, 
for it means that the food grown even in the 
worst years together with the unconsumed 
surplus of previous years is sufficient for the 
needs of the country for a twelvemonth. 
But this assumes that it can be readily 
carried long distances. In old days this was 
not the case. Each village was isolated, and 
each region was still more completely isolated. 
An extensive drought in these circumstances 
vas an irremediable disaster. There were no 
iieans of combating it. Famine in the 
fullest and most dreadful sense of the word 
overtook the population. The more fortunate 
individuals or village communities might have 



ECONOMIC LIFE 151 

reserved stocks of food sufficient to maintain 
themselves but most of the inhabitants 
either died or dragged themselves miserably 
to places beyond the famine zone. If we had 
a complete record of the fortunes of an Indian 
village during the last three hundred years, 
we should probably find that its population 
had ever and anon been blotted out by some 
terrible drought. 

A famine in this sense is no longer possible 
in India. The word is retained in official and 
popular language, but it now merely means a 
drought and the absence of employment and 
dearness of food resulting therefrom. It does 
not mean that there is no food and that 
multitudes will starve to death. The cause 
of these changed and improved conditions 
must be sought in the railway and canal 
construction policy pursued by the British 
Indian government during the last forty 
years. There are now thirty-one thousand 
miles of railway and twenty-three million 
acres of canal irrigated land in India. These 
figures mean two things. The canals mean 
that in the worst year a vast area is placed 
beyond the reach of drought and produces 
food. The railways mean that the food pro- 
duced on the irrigated lands and in the more 
distant regions not affected by the drought 
will be conveyed with speed and security to 
the drought afflicted districts. To use a 



152 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

military metaphor, the railways and canals 
now enable the Indian government to come 
to the relief of a population beleaguered by 
drought in any part of India. The key to 
the position lay in the food supply. Now 
that this position has been carried, the precise 
method of relieving the distressed population 
is merely a question of tactics. The plan 
adopted is to provide employment and wages 
by opening extensive public works for the 
able-bodied residents of the villages who are 
temporarily thrown out of work by the 
stoppage of agriculture, and to relieve the 
young, the old and the infirm gratuitously. 
A famine-relief campaign of this kind is a very 
great and arduous undertaking, and could 
not be carried through successfully if the 
whole scheme of operations had not been 
thought out in all its details, and all arrange- 
ments made beforehand. This has been done 
in each province, and the results embodied in 
a " famine-code," an inexact term which 
really means the regulations for the relief of 
distress in seasons of scarcity. A famine 
relief campaign is also a costly affair, and may 
run into a bill of two or three millions sterling. 
But as such relief is now as much a part of 
the ordinary business of the state as poor-law 
relief in England, a sinking fund (called 
the " famine- insurance grant ") sufficient 
to meet the probable expenditure over a 



ECONOMIC LIFE 153 

series of years is provided in the annual 
estimates. 

Thus the Indian population is now protected 
against the extreme severities of drought. 
Drought, as experienced in India, must still 
necessarily cause much privation, great des- 
truction of wealth in the form of ungarnered 
crops, and some rise, though no longer a 
marked rise, in the death rate. But the 
village communities are kept together instead 
of being swept away as they were in old days, 
and the injury done to the agriculture of a 
province is repaired on the advent of the 
next good monsoon. Under native govern- 
ments famine was one of the several checks 
constantly operating to keep down the growth 
of the population. Under British rule war 
and anarchy have long ceased, while the 
destructive edge of famine has been blunted. 
Has then the population increased greatly, 
and is it tending to outrun the means of 
subsistence ? In the last thirty years the 
population of India as a whole has increased 
about twenty per cent, or by more than 
fifty million. It is now three hundred and 
fifteen million. The figures are portentous in 
magnitude. For a population of this size 
there is certainly not a livelihood according 
to the standard of western Europe under the 
present industrial conditions of India. But 
it may safely be said that there is a better 



154 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

livelihood to-day for the present population 
than there was thirty years ago for the then 
population. In other words the production of 
India, agricultural and industrial, has increased 
faster than the population. In its railway and 
irrigation policy the Indian government has 
done more than merely protect the country 
from drought. It has increased its productive 
powers. In the Punjab some millions of 
acres of highly fertile land, lying outside the 
monsoon zone on the confines of the great 
Indian desert and formerly bare and desolate, 
have been transmuted into rich irrigation 
colonies. At the same time railways have 
opened large and distant markets to the 
cultivator. In other provinces a like impulse 
has been given to the extension of the arable 
area and to the cultivation of valuable crops. 
India thereby has been able both to feed its 
increased population and in years of average 
prosperity to export upwards of £100,000,000 
of food grains, fibres, oil-seeds, or the 
manufactured products thereof, to foreign 
countries. 

The industrial revolution in India may be 
said to be beginning. So far its effects have 
been most felt in the country's principal 
industry, agriculture. The village community 
of the past is losing its isolation and its 
economic independence. It is beginning to 
produce for distant markets and is being drawn 



ECONOMIC LIFE 155 

into the ocean of international commerce. 
The change is not without its dangers, and 
there are those who view it with regret. 
But it is inevitable and it is on the whole 
fraught with good. Labour has already 
become more mobile, and thereby more 
efficient. Mining and modern manufacturing 
industries have taken root at various points 
on or near the seaboard and at specially 
favoured centres in the interior. Among 
these industries it is sufficient to mention 
gold and coal-mining, cotton and jute power- 
mills, tea and coffee planting. These and 
other industries are steadily growing. They 
have created an active labour market, and 
the competition for labour has undoubtedly 
raised the wages of unskilled and skilled 
labour throughout the country. Ten years 
ago field labour could be had for twopence a 
day in upper India. The wage is now 
doubled and in many places trebled. The 
wage of a skilled blacksmith or carpenter 
has risen in a still greater degree. Those 
who know India best are most confident about 
its industrial progress. 

The answer therefore to the questions 
raised at the beginning of this section is that 
the Indian standard of living is not that of 
western Europe. It is lower; but poverty 
is a relative term, and the difference of 
standards in such a comparison is not merely 



156 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

one of degree but of quality. The Indian 
standard, such as it is, has risen since the 
establishment of British rule, and the improve- 
ment is due to that rule. It is still rising, 
and as far as one can see it will continue to 
rise. 



CHAPTER Vn 

THE GOVERNMENT OF BRITISH INDIA 

The government of British India is a govern- 
ment of a dependency of the British Crown. 
As such its powers are derived from and 
defined by Parliament, and it may therefore 
be called a derivative government. A govern- 
ment of this type is not national in origin, 
nor is it autonomous. But India is a con- 
tinent without nationalities, and for seven 
hundred years it has either been under foreign 
rulers or plunged in anarchy. Its vast 
territory has been incessantly split up and 
parcelled out among foreign conquerors and 
contending dynasties ; its population is 
internally divided to a degree unparalleled 
elsewhere even in Asia. British rule in India 
can find a good title, as the lawyers say, in 
the conditions preceding it. It succeeded to 
the Mughal empire in the last throes of dissolu- 
tion. It was welcomed by the Indian peoples, j| 
who co-operated willingly in promoting its*> 
dominion, and whom it saved from the anarchy 
157 



158 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

which was grievously wasting them. It is 
to this day accepted by the peoples and 
princes of India as the best government of 
which they have knowledge, and as freely 
admitting them to its councils and to respons- 
ible office. All the subordinate and much of 
the superior work of the administration is 
performed by Indians. In that sense the 
government of British India is a national 
government. 

The evolution of this government is one of 
the most remarkable chapters of political 
history. We have seen that in 1858 an Act was 
passed by Parliament transferring the govern- 
ment of India from the East India Company 
to the Crown, and that Queen Victoria's 
memorable Proclamation of November 1, 
1858, which has been justly called the Magna 
Carta of India, announced to the peoples of 
India the principles on which British rule 
would be conducted. And if we are content 
to start from this point, we can point to a 
series of Acts of Parliament building up the 
present fabric of the Indian government. 
But unless we go further back, half the contri- 
vances which this fabric exhibits are not 
intelligible to us. We should not know how 
they came into being or for what purpose. 
Again, we should be ignorant of the process by 
which the Crown of England acquired this 
great dominion beyond the seas. What says 



GOVERNMENT OF BRITISH INDIA 159 

the Queen's Proclamation on this point ? 
It says that the Crown with the advice 
and consent of Parliament had resolved 
to take upon itself the government of the 
territories in India, " heretofore administered 
in trust for us by the Honourable East 
India Company." What does this mean ? 
How came a trading company to be 
the trustee for the Crown of a great 
dependency ? 

A comprehensive legal phrase like " trust " 
is sometimes used to cover a doubtful position. 
In the third quarter of the eighteenth century 
the British people and Parliament awoke to 
the fact that the East India Company had 
become possessed of an immense territory in 
India, where it was exercising sovereign 
rights, raising armies, making peace and 
war, and generally incurring responsibilities 
too vast for a trading association. The 
Company claimed to hold its territorial acquisi- 
tions as its private property, and at first 
Parliament was not disposed to challenge 
seriously the claim, but contented itself with 
exacting for the British treasury an annual 
tribute of £400,000. But the Company's 
debts and the confusion of its affau-s in India 
re-opened the question, and convinced the 
nation that a radical reform was necessary. 
The remedy devised by Parliament was Lord 
North's famous Regulating Act of 1773, which 



160 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

remodelled the governing body of the 
Company, established a Governor-General 
and council for Bengal, and set up a supreme 
court of justice in Calcutta. It was under 
this Act that Warren Hastings was appointed | 
Governor-General. The Act was a sign that 
Parliament recognised a national responsibility 
for the empire created by the Company, but it 
left the question of ownership unsettled. 
It left the Company in possession of its 
territories and revenues for the term of its 
charter. 

The Regulating Act proved to be seriously 
defective. Warren Hastings had unexpected 
difficulties with his council and with the 
supreme court, and was plunged through no 
fault of his own into a series of exhausting 
wars with the Mahrattas and other native 
states. The affairs of the Company were 
constantly before Parliament, and formed the 
occasion for much party warfare, culminating 
in the impeachment and trial of Warren 
Hastings. Whig and Tory statesmen alike 
recognised that the Company's exercise of 
sovereign powers was a danger to England, 
and that a complete change of system was 
imperatively required. They differed as to 
how the change should be effected. Was 
the Company to be put on one side, and the 
government and patronage of India vested 
in the ministry of the day ? Or was the 



GOVERNMENT OF BRITISH INDIA 161 

Company still to administer and appoint 
to offices, while being brought under the 
supervision and control of the ministry ? 
The second alternative was followed by Pitt 
in his famous Act of 1784. 

The constitution created by Pitt is known 
as the " double government " system. It 
endured with some minor changes till 1858, 
when the Crown assumed the direct govern- 
ment of India ; and many of its features have 
been retained in the present constitution of 
the Indian government. Its importance there- 
fore can hardly be over-rated. The essence of 
the " double government " system was that 
the substance of authority passed from the 
Company to the Crown. The Company 
reigned but in important matters did not 
govern. It retained the patronage in respect 
of Indian appointments, though the approval 
of the Crown was required to the appointment 
of the Governor-General, the Governors of 
Madras and Bombay, and the Commander-in- 
Chief. The real authority in important 
matters was vested in a Board of Control. 
This Board consisted of six privy councillors 
(nominees, of course, of the ministry), but its 
powers were virtually exercised by its Presi- 
dent, who was a cabinet minister. The Board 
saw all the correspondence from India, and no 
order could be sent to India by the Court of 
Directors without its approval. The Board 



162 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

could also draw up orders and require the 
Court to send them to India. Further, there 
was a special arrangement by which the Board 
could send to India and receive from India 
correspondence marked " secret " without 
the contents being made known to the Court 
of Directors. Under this system the home 
ministry was virtually responsible for the 
policy pursued in India, and became account- 
able for the same to Parliament. It left the 
detailed administration to the Company, but 
as it had a final voice in the selection of 
the Governor-General, it could make sure 
that the person appointed to that high 
office was at one with it on large questions 
of policy. In that sense he was a " parlia- 
mentary " Governor-General, because he was 
the choice of the ministry, and the min- 
istry was responsible to Parliament for his 
acts. 

From the passing of Pitt's Act of 1784 
the East India Company may be said to have 
administered India as " trustees for the 
Crown," though the phrase was not used until 
a much later date. It is so used in the Act 
of 1833 renewing the Company's charter on 
the condition, among others, that it ceased 
to be a trading association in India. Pitt's 
system retained the Governor-General and his 
council as the supreme executive authority, 
but gave the former the right to over- 



\ GOVERNMENT OF BRITISH INDIA 163 

rule his council if occasion required. The 
Governor-General in Council was also given 
the power to make laws, at first in 
an informal way under the name of " regu- 
lations," but subsequently in the form 
of Acts and with the formalities of a 
legislature. 

It is obvious that the double government 
system could be altered at any time into direct 
single government by the Crown with little 
difficulty. When the change was determined 
on after the mutiny, a Secretary of State for 
India took the place of the President of the 
Board of Control, and was given the assistance 
of a council, the members of which, as regards 
Indian experience, took the place of the Court 
of Directors. In India the system of gov- 
ernment was not affected. The Governor- 
General in Council remained, and the Governor- 
General continued to be a " parliamentary " 
Governor-General, responsible to Parliament 
through the medium of the ministry. In its 
immediate effect the change in fact was one 
rather of spirit than in the actual structure 
of the government. In the words of King 
Edward's Proclamation, " it sealed the unity 
of Indian government and opened a new 
era." It was the visible sign of the incorpora- 
tion of India into the British empire. It 
brought the Indian peoples and princes into 
immediate relations with the Crown and 

F2 



164 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

gave a direct objective to their loyalty. It 
was a pledge that the government would 
be administered with a sole eye to their 
benefit. It was also a pledge that their 
rights and privileges would be scrupulously 
maintained, their religions and customs re- 
spected, and that they would be freely and 
impartially admitted to offices in the public 
service. 

Since 1858 many changes have been made 
in the system of Indian administration, but 
the main structure is unaltered. These 
changes may generally be ascribed to three 
causes — ^the ever-growing mass of business 
and increasing duties of the administration, 
the necessity for decentralising the govern- 
ment, and the policy of giving the Indian 
people a larger voice and a larger share in^i 
the management of public affairs. The cen- ' 
tral or supreme government in India is that 
of the Governor- General in Council. It is 
commonly spoken of as " the Government of 
India," to distinguish it from the local gov- 
ernments. In 1858 the council consisted of 
four " ordinary " or full-time members, the 
Commander-in-Chief being usually added as 
a fifth or " extraordinary " member. Owing 
to the growth of business the ordinary 
members have now been increased to six. 
But this is not the full extent of the change. 
In 1858 the council worked as a collective 



GOVERNMENT OF BRITISH INDIA 165 

body. Now each member has his own depart- 
ment^ and disposes of the great bulk of the 
work as a departmental minister, only the 
most important questions being reserved for 
consideration by the Governor-General in 
Council. In other words the departmental 
and cabinet system of our government and 
of other modern governments has been 
established in India with the happiest results 
as regards economy of labour and despatch 
of business. 

A much more important change or constitu- 
tional development is found in the rise of 
the legislative council of the Governor- 
General. The supreme law-making power 
for India is Parliament. But Parliament has 
wisely contented itself with settling the 
framework or, as a continental statesman 
would say, the " organic laws " of government 
in India, and with delegating to a legislative 
body in India the power of making detailed 
laws subject to the approval of the Crown. 
The problem has always been as to how this 
legislative body should be constituted. There 
are cogent reasons why an autocratic govern- 
ment with powers derived from an external 
source, such as the Indian government is, 
should have a prevailing voice in the making 
of the laws which it administers. But clearly 
it should not have the sole voice ; the voice 
of the people should also be heard. Parlia- 



166 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

ment therefore began in 1861 in a tentative 
way to lay the foundations in India of a 
deliberative assembly to which the function of 
making laws should be entrusted. It enacted 
that the Governor-General and his executive 
council might, under certain conditions, sit 
as a legislative council, one of these conditions 
being the addition of twelve purely " legisla- 
tive " members, of whom six at least were to 
be persons not in the public service. The 
tiny plant of those days has since grown into 
a large and vigorous assembly. The legislative 
council of the Governor-General now contains 
in all sixty-six members, of whom thirty 
are non-officials. The latter are either 
returned by specified electorates or are other- 
wise the representatives of specified classes. 
The legislative council is no longer confined 
to the work of making laws. It debates 
the detailed provisions of the annual budget 
estimates, and divides on resolutions concern- 
ing these. Its members may put questions 
to the executive government. They may 
move resolutions on matters of public interest, 
and debate and take divisions upon them. 
In these ways the legislative council is now 
associated with the government in the general 
work of the administration. Its attitude is 
necessarily that of a critic, though by no 
means always an unfriendly critic. If its 
presence keeps the executive authorities on 



GOVERNMENT OF BRITISH INDIA 167 

their mettle, they are given an opportunity 
which they greatly value of putting the 
government case in debate before the council. 
A clean-handed and efficient government has 
generally a good defence for its policy, and 
need not fear its critics if it can meet them fairly 
in debate. The experience of the last two 
years (Lord Morley's Indian Councils Act 
was enacted by Parliament in 1909) is dis- 
tinctly satisfactory in this and other respects. 
The enlarged council has brought the executive 
government nearer to the people, and has 
made its motives more intelligible to them. 
But the legislative council is not a Parliament. 
Its powers have been strictly limited by the 
British Parliament, from whom they are 
derived. It cannot turn out the executive 
government, it cannot stop supplies, it cannot 
enforce the resolutions that it passes. For all 
that it exercises a great and salutary influ- 
ence on the general administration as an organ 
of public opinion. It shapes the laws of the 
country, and it can propose new laws to 
meet the needs of a progressive society. An 
interesting case in point is the bill for estab- 
lishing a partial system of compulsory element- 
ary education which Mr. Gokhale, the leader 
of the Indian national party in the council, 
has recently introduced. During the recent 
recess its distinguished author has toured 
through the country and has addressed 



168 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

many public meetings, with the very proper 
object of explaining the provisions of the 
measure and conciliating opinion in its 
favour, just as we are accustomed to see 
public men in this country do in a similar 
case. This is an instance of the quicken- 
ing effect which the recent constitutional 
reforms are exercising over public life in 
India. 

The Government of India, as the supreme 
executive authority in India, exercises its 
powers in two ways. Certain departments of 
the state it keeps in its own hands and 
directly administers : others it has made over 
to the local governments : and in respect of 
these it contents itself with supervision and 
general control. In the former class are 
included the army and defence of the country, 
political relations with foreign states, the 
management of the finances, the currency and 
the debt, the railways, the post and telegraphs. 
The second class virtually includes the general 
internal administration of the country. In 
1833 British India consisted of the three 
provinces, or presidencies as they were called, 
of Bengal, Madras, and Bombay. The 
Governor-General in Council administered 
Bengal and had a controlling power over the 
governments of the other presidencies. Now 
there are eight important governments, in- 
cluding Madras and Bombay, besides the 



GOVERNMENT OF BRITISH INDIA 169 

two frontier chief commissionerships. Madras 
and Bombay are under what is called 
council government, namely, a Governor 
appointed by the Crown, and an executive 
council of three members. In Bengal the 
Lieutenant-Governor has recently been given 
an executive council of two members. Four 
other provinces — ^the Punjab, the United 
Provinces of Agra and Oudh, Eastern Ben- 
gal and Assam, Burma — ^are governed by a 
Lieutenant-Governor without an executive 
council. In each of these seven provinces 
there is a provincial legislative council, 
modelled on the lines of the legislative council 
of the Governor-General, and empowered to 
discuss the provincial finances and other 
administrative matters relating to the pro- 
vince. These provincial councils are of 
considerable size; they consist largely of 
unofficial members representing constituencies 
or classes ; within certain limits they make 
the laws of their respective provinces ; and 
they are the mouthpiece of the educated 
community, such as at present it is, of the 
province. 

This system of a number of subordinate 
governments and of a central government for 
supervision and control recognises the fact that 
India is a continent and not a single country. 
No other arrangement would be practicable. 
At first sight it seems to resemble the plan 



170 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

adopted in uniting the provinces of Canada 
in the Dominion Government and the Aus- 
tralian Colonies in the Commonwealth of 
Australia. But there is an important differ- 
ence. In the Canadian and Australian cases 
the separate colonies existed before union 
was thought of. Their rights had to be 
carefully defined and safeguarded by the 
Act of Parliament incorporating them into a 
union. The federal government thus created 
is based on a constitutional law which cannot 
be changed except on certain strictly defined 
conditions. The case of India is different. 
There is no constitutional instrument deter- 
mining the relation of the Government of 
India and the local governments. The 
Government of India has supreme and un- 
divided authority, subject, of course, to the 
home government. It is a unitary and not 
a federal government. The local govern- 
ments are its agents, and they derive their 
various powers from it. This does not 
mean that the local governments lead a 
precarious existence, enjoying independence 
one day and losing it the next. The 
Government of India and the home govern- 
ment believe too firmly in decentralisation 
for that to be possible. The process is 
steadily in the direction of enlarging the 
powers of the local governments, and 
the very fact that there is no written 



GOVERNMENT OF BRITISH INDIA 171 

constitution and that a mistake in one 
direction or the other can be repaired 
without political strife, makes advance the 
easier. 

Let us see how the system actually works, 
taking first the case of finance. All the 
revenues of British India, whether collected 
by the local governments or by the central 
government, are paid into one exchequer. 
Of the total roughly one-third is made over 
to the local governments as their share. 
They have the spending of some twenty-six 
millions sterling out of seventy-eight mil- 
lions. The share of the local governments 
is settled in the following manner. Certain 
heads of revenue have been made over entirely 
to them ; of others they receive not less than 
one-half ; others again belong entirely to 
the Government of India. Thus the Govern- 
ment of India retains all receipts from cus- 
toms, railways, opium, posts, and telegraphs, 
and half the receipts from land revenue, 
excise, income-tax, stamps. The local 
governments manage the latter sources of 
revenue, and have a direct financial interest 
in developing them. As to expenditure, 
similar arrangements are observed. The 
Government of India defrays the cost of the 
railways and other departments directly 
managed by it ; and shares with the local 
governments the cost of the land revenue 



172 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

and other departments, the revenue of which 
is divided. The system may seem intricate, 
and in its details it is. But the broad principle 
is that the local governments meet the needs 
of the internal administration of the country 
from certain sources of revenue made over 
to them. It is their interest to develop these 
revenues and to expend them to the best 
advantage. 

The local government touches the citizen 
at many points : the central government is 
far away. The local government dispenses 
patronage : creates and appoints to offices. 
It provides law courts and judges ; medical 
men, hospitals and dispensaries ; makes roads 
and bridges ; helps struggling municipalities 
with grants for drainage and water-supply ; 
regulates the collection of the revenue and 
sits in judgment on the conduct of the officials. 
To the ordinary citizen it is the government so 
far as he is concerned. Public feeling in 
India is therefore beginning to take shape 
in provincial moulds. The enlarged legisla- 
tive councils which have been set up in the 
several provinces encourage this tendency. 
The local council discusses the provincial 
budget, and realises that more money could 
be locally spent with advantage. It sees 
that of the revenues collected in the province 
a large part goes to the central government 
and is spent on objects, such as national 



GOVERNMENT OF BRITISH INDIA 173 

defence, that do not directly concern the 
province. It does not question the necessity 
for such expenditure, but it is inclined to 
think that it might be met in some other way 
than from revenues collected in the province, 
or that other provinces have been more 
favourably treated. The growth of a public 
spirit provincial in its aims is an interest- 
ing fact in modern India. It has to be 
reckoned with in other matters than finance, 
as was seen in the case of the partition of 
Bengal. 

The most distinctive feature in Indian 
administration is the " district." It is the 
administrative unit. Every province is di- 
vided into districts, each of which is of the 
size of one of the larger English counties. 
" In India," Sir John Strachey has said, in 
his book to which reference has been already 
made, " where an absolute government is 
administered by a small body of foreigners 
far more advanced in civilisation than the 
people of the country itself, the most essential 
condition of safety to the rulers, and of good 
government to the people, is that authority 
should be strong, and authority cannot be 
strong unless it is concentrated. In every 
district of British India the government has 
its representative, in whom all executive 
civil authority centres." This officer is usually 
called the " district magistrate and collector," 



174 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

and as a rule he is a member of the Indian 
civil service. He is the chief magistrate of 
the district, but he is a great deal more than 
a magistrate. He is ultimately responsible 
for the maintenance of the public peace, and 
for ensuring obedience to the laws. In most 
provinces he has authority over the police, 
and all the magisterial courts and jails are 
under his supervision. His title of collector 
is misleading. In England a " collector " is 
a petty officer who collects rates and taxes. 
In India the " collector " is the head of the 
general administration of the district. The 
term is full of history. It takes us back to 
the time of Clive and of Warren Hastings, 
when the right of collecting the revenues of 
Bengal was ceded to the Company, whUe 
the government of the province remained in 
native hands. The Company's officers were 
then collectors of the land revenue and nothing 
more. Later on, when the Company took 
over the administration of the province, 
the collector became responsible both for 
collecting the revenue and for the general 
administration of the district. The collection 
of the revenue is only one of his duties. 
He is concerned with every aspect of the 
land system, with the condition of agri- 
culture, the health and well-being of the 
population, and the working of the district 
and borough councils. The local government 



GOVERNMENT OF BRITISH INDIA 175 

turns to him for information and advice 
on all questions. " Upon his energy and 
personal character," it has been said, 
"depends ultimately the efficiency of our 
Indian government." 

The duties of government in India are in 
many respects much wider than in the United 
Kingdom. The British took over India in a 
state of economic nakedness. There were 
no roads, docks, harbours, canals, hospitals, 
schools, colleges, printing presses, or other 
requirements of civilised life, and neither the 
disposition nor the means on the part of the 
population to provide them. British rule 
had to play the part of a universal provider 
and special providence : and having started 
in that line it has continually extended its 
functions. " It manages a vast forest pro- 
perty, and is a large manufacturer of salt 
and opium. It owns the bulk of the railways 
in the country and directly manages a con- 
siderable portion of them ; and it has con- 
structed and maintains most of the important 
irrigation works. It owns and manages the 
postal and telegraph systems. It has the 
monopoly of note issue, and it alone can set 
the mints in motion. It acts for the most part 
as its own banker, and it occasionally makes 
temporary loans to presidency banks in times 
of financial stringency. With the co-operation 
of the Secretary of State it regulates the 



176 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

discharge of the balance of trade as between 
India and the outside world, through the 
action of the India council's drawings. It 
lends money to municipalities, rural boards 
and agriculturists, and occasionally to the 
owners of historic estates." To these hybrid 
duties may be added those that spring from 
the prescriptive right of the ruling power 
to a share in the produce of the land. Save 
where (as in Bengal) the government has 
commuted the claim, it re-assesses from 
time to time the cash value of its share. 
This is called " making a settlement of the 
land revenue." It keeps up land surveys 
and registers in which every field, the name 
of the occupier, the crop, the rent are shown. 
It intervenes between landlords and tenants 
for the protection of the latter. It manages 
the estates of indebted or otherwise dis- 
qualified proprietors. In the Punjab and in 
some other tracts it prevents the transfer of 
land from the agricultural to the non-agri- 
cultural classes. Further, the state in 
India is directly responsible in a degree un- 
known in England for police, education, 
sanitation, medical relief, and ordinary public 
works. Lastly, in times of drought it under- 
takes " famine relief " measures on the scale 
of a great campaign. 

Government so extensive as this means large 
establishments. Some three million persons 



GOVERNMENT OF BRITISH INDIA 177 

are returned in the census as employed in 
the public service. The majority of this 
army are merely petty local offices, such as 
village headmen, watchmen, or accountants. 
But the number of well paid responsible posts 
is very large, according to English ideas. 
Indians hold all but the highest posts, and 
their share in the latter is continually increas- 
ing. In 1903 of twenty-eight thousand posts 
carrying salaries of £60 a year and upwards, 
only six thousand five hundred were held by 
Europeans. This may be taken to represent 
the entire European element in the whole civil 
administration. The Indian civil service, 
which is recruited by open competition in 
England, consists of about twelve hundred 
and fifty members, of whom sixty-five are 
Indians. In every high court one or more 
of the judges are Indians. The executive 
council of the Governor General, and those 
of Bombay, Madras, Bengal, each contain an 
Indian member. These facts and figures 
give some idea of the extent to which 
the government of British India is carried 
on by the people of the country. In con- 
sidering whether the European leaven is 
excessive, sufficient, or insufficient, it should 
be borne in mind that the administration 
is European in methods and in guiding 
principles, and that for many posts tech- 
nical and professional qualifications are 



178 PEOPLES' & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

required which Indians do not at present 
possess. 

A word may be here said about the laws 
which are in force in India and the courts by 
which they are administered. How far do 
they observe the principles of European justice 
and morality ? The question opens an 
interesting chapter of history. At first the 
British courts in Bengal administered native 
law. They found the Muhammadan criminal 
law universally in force, and applied it to 
Muhammadans and Hindus alike. In civil 
cases they applied the personal law of the 
parties. They also were guided by the 
principle that no act committed in consequence 
of a rule of caste in native families should be 
deemed a crime. This principle saved practices 
such as human sacrifice, exposure of children, 
the burning of widows, the burying alive of 
lepers. The Muhammadan criminal law also 
abounded in matter which was equally 
objectionable according to European ideas. 
By degrees the British courts shook themselves 
free from the worst features of native law. 
Suttee or widow burning in 1829 was definitely 
made a penal offence. But it was not until 
1862, when the penal code was brought into 
force, that the procedure of the courts and a 
good deal of the substantive law began to 
conform generally to European ideas of 
morality. The penal code prohibits a good 



GOVERNMENT OF BRITISH INDIA 179 

many acts which were not offences in Muham- 
madan or Hindu eyes. It has taught a new 
morality. The law in this respect has been a 
schoolmaster. In civil matters, where family 
caste or religion is affected, the personal or 
law of the parties still applies. The Muham- 
madan retains his law of divorce, the Hindu 
his law about plurality of wives. There is op- 
position here between our ideas and those of 
the East, but it is too firmly rooted in radical 
differences of civilisation, religion and race to 
be removed by the law-giver. Of the Indian 
courts of law hard things are often said. It 
is said that they are expensive to the litigant 
and dilatory : that they are over-run by 
petty lawyers and very technical : that they 
administer a procedure and legal system which 
are far in advance of the need of poor and 
humble folk. These complaints are often 
made about courts of civil justice in other 
countries. They are no doubt true in part 
as regards the Indian courts. But the bitterest 
critic of the Indian courts is obliged to admit 
that the great majority of the Indian judges 
are now clean handed. This is a notable 
and most encouraging fact. It denotes a 
notable rise in the average level of public 
morality. It is due to education, to the 
moral teaching of the penal code, and 
to the example set by European public 
servants. It is also due to adequate salaries 



180 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

and pensions, permanency of employ- 
ment, and good prospects of advancement. 
The government in British India is a 
good master, and on the whole is well 
served. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE NATIVE STATES 

The Indian law codes contain two definitions 
of cardinal importance. One is " British 
India," the other " India." " British India " 
means all places and territories within the 
King's dominions which are governed by him 
through the Governor General in Council. 
" India " includes British India " together 
with any territories of any native prince or 
chief under the suzerainty of His Majesty, 
exercised through the Governor-General in 
Council." " British India " is under direct 
British rule. The portion outside British 
India which yet is India is not under direct 
British rule. It is occupied by native princes 
or chiefs whose position as regards the Crown 
is that of an inferior power to the suzerain or 
paramount power. 

From this certain consequences follow. 
The laws made by the legislative councils in 
British India do not apply to the subjects of 
native princes. The law courts of British 

181 



182 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

India have no jurisdiction in their territories. 
Their subjects are not British subjects. Thus 
India contains a vast area which, in many- 
respects, though not wholly, resembles foreign 
territory. 

This circumstance is often forgotten when 
Indian questions are discussed. Often the 
discussion proceeds on the assumption that 
the whole of India is under direct British rule, 
and that the Governor-General in Council, 
with the sanction of the home government, 
can enforce throughout it a common policy. 
For example, persons who object to opium 
production in India have on occasions 
advocated the suppression by law of the 
industry throughout the country, forgetful of 
the fact that it is largely carried on in the 
territories of native chiefs, with whose terri- 
torial administration the British government 
does not interfere except on extraordinary 
and well-known grounds. Again political 
constitutions are sometimes proposed for 
India by extreme reformers that ignore the 
existence of the native states and would 
be quite incompatible with their continued 
existence. To attempt to turn the flank of 
this difficulty by suggesting that the native 
states might be left " outside " the scheme, 
presupposes great and widespread ignorance 
of the size and importance of these states, 
of their history and traditions, and of the 



^ THE NATIVE STATES 183 

pledges given to their rulers by the British 
Government. 

Some idea of the importance of the " native 
states " problem is conveyed by the following 
figures. The native states occupy one-third of 
the area of the Indian continent and contain 
seventy-seven millions of the three hundred 
and fifteen millions of persons comprising its 
total population. But these figures do not 
convey an adequate idea of the delicacy and 
difficulty of the task which the existence of 
these states and the maintenance of healthy 
relations with them imposes on the British 
government and its officers. The states vary 
greatly in size, in resources and civilisation, 
in the character of their peoples and chiefs, and 
in the amount of independence which by 
treaty or usage the latter enjoy in the internal 
administration of their territories. In the 
case of the larger states the British govern- 
ment in ordinary circumstances rarely inter- 
feres. In the Bombay presidency there are 
clusters of tiny states, many of which individu- 
ally consist of only one or two villages. In the 
hill country around Simla similar groups of 
petty states are found. In such cases the 
exercise by the chief of sovereign powers 
over his subjects, if allowed at all, is carefully 
controlled by British officers. In such states 
politics are of a humble order. An anecdote 
used to be current at Simla that the super- 



184 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

intendent of the hill states was one day waited 
upon by the peasant headmen of a state, 
who, producing a key, explained that they 
had deposed their raja and had locked him 
up in his bedroom. They had come to 
seek advice as to the next stage in a properly 
conducted revolution. At the other end of 
the scale are large states that would form 
respectable minor kingdoms in Europe. The 
dominions of the Nizam of Hyderabad or 
the state of Kashmir are each nearly as large 
as the mainland of Italy. Hyderabad con- 
tains twelve millions of inhabitants ; Kashmir 
three millions ; Mysore, nearly six millions ; 
Gwalior, Jaipur and Travancore about three 
millions each ; Baroda and Jodhpur over 
two millions each. Others have populations 
ranging from one to two millions. In these 
states there is a more or less regular system 
of administration modelled on the system 
existing in British districts. Usually there 
is a prime minister, who in Hindu states 
is called the diwan, and in Muhammadan 
states the wazir or some equivalent name. 
There are other ministers in charge of 
different departments, a supreme court of 
justice, and district officers. The ministers 
and judges are sometimes Indians borrowed 
from the public service of a British pro- 
vince, and such men bring with them the 
principles and methods of modern govern- 



THE NATIVE STATES 185 

merit. Under their guidance the largest 
states have adopted in a more or less modified 
and simplified form the penal code of British 
India, the procedure codes and some of the 
substantive laws. Experiments in representa- 
tive institutions have also here and there been 
made, though they are not allowed to go far. 
In Mysore and Travancore a representative 
assembly is convened for a few days every year, 
is addressed by the diwan, is permitted to talk 
on public questions, and is then dismissed. 
In Baroda a beginning has been made with 
a legislative council. But the dominant note 
in native states is the absolutism of the ruler. 
In states of the Rajput type, where the chief 
is the head of the clan and the nobles are his 
blood-relations, it is qualified to some extent 
by their privileges and prescriptive rights. 
But in states of the ordinary type the ruler 
is the state, though he may choose to rule 
by deputies. At any time he may elect 
to put them aside and to take up the reins : 
while some of the ablest princes of India 
have always kept the detailed administration 
of their states in their own hands with 
advantage to their subjects. A wise and good 
chief finds an inexhaustible pleasure in the 
task of ruling. No one disputes his authority 
or can turn him out of office. The state is 
his patrimony, and if he improves it, the 
benefits endure to his posterity. 



186 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

How come native states to exist in modern 
India ? How is it that we find these blocks 
of semi-foreign territory in a vast continent 
where British rule is incontestably supreme ? 
If they are the relics of a submerged society, 
as they seem to be, to what do they owe their 
preservation ? An answer to these questions 
will be attempted, though it must necessarily 
be of a concise and general character. In 
his British Dominion in India Sir Alfred 
Lyall has observed that "the present form 
and constitution of the British empire in 
India with its vast provinces and numerous 
feudatories represents historically the gradual 
incorporation under one dominion of states 
that have submitted and states that have been 
forcibly subdued." Broadly speaking, the 
states that were subdued are now included in 
British India, and the states that submitted 
are now the native states of India. But 
exceptions to this general statement have to 
be noted. Some states made their submission 
in the first instance and were admitted to 
treaty rights, but were afterwards annexed to 
the British dominions for special reasons. 
Thus the Mahratta state of Nagpur " lapsed," 
as it is termed, to the Crown in 1853 on the 
death of the chief without male issue ; and 
the King of Oudh was deposed and his 
territories were annexed in 1856 on the ground 
of intolerable misgovernment. On the other 



THE NATIVE STATES 187 

hand some of the present native states were 
forcibly subdued, but afterwards were for 
reasons of policy re-established under other 
rulers and exist to this day. The most im- 
portant instance is that of the Mysore state. 
Early in the eighteenth century the ancient 
Hindu dynasty that had long possessed this 
state was overthrown by a Muhammadan 
adventurer, who founded a military kingdom 
and waged war with the East India Company 
and neighbouring native powers. His policy 
was continued by his son, the famous Tipu 
Sultan, who threw in his lot with the French 
and was for thirty years the inveterate 
enemy of the Company, and a standing 
menace to the peace of southern India. In 
1799 he was defeated and slain, and his 
territories were occupied by the British forces. 
It was thought right to restore the old Hindu 
dynasty, and the present native state of 
Mysore owes its existence to the conquerors' 
generosity. Subject to such exceptions, 
which are not numerous, the native states 
to-day represent states which submitted to 
British rule and accepted the terms offered to 
them. 

It has already been said that there are no 
nationalities in India, and that its population 
is made up of multifarious groups living under 
their own personal law and special rules of 
conduct. We must be careful therefore not 



188 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

to read into the term " native states " a 
larger meaning than it possesses. The term 
does not imply that these states are Indian 
nationalities which have survived in a contin- 
ent otherwise under foreign dominion. It 
means nothing more than a state not under 
direct British rule. The ruler may be and often 
is as much a foreigner to the people whom he 
rules as is an Englishman. Even in those 
cases in which, as in the Rajput states, the 
chief is descended from an ancient dynasty 
and is the hereditary head of a military clan, 
the mass of the population of his state does 
not belong to the clan and is outside its organi- 
sation. But the Rajput chief and his clansmen 
at all events represent an ancient political 
society ; and in that sense the Rajput states 
may be said to stand for the principle of 
nationality. The same may also be said of 
the interesting group of Sikh states, such as 
Patiala and Nabha, existing in the eastern 
Punjab ; and more doubtfully of the ancient 
Hindu dynasties which survive to this day in 
the native states of Travancore, Mysore, and 
in one or two others. In all these cases, it is 
to be noted, the British government stood 
between these states and destruction. They 
were on the point of being destroyed, and in 
some cases they actually had been absorbed, 
by other and more powerful military powers 
of which India in the eighteenth century was 



THE NATIVE STATES 189 

full. Mysore, as has already been said, was 
reconstituted as a Hindu state by the British 
on the suppression of the Muhammadan 
usurper, Tipu Sultan. Travancore was rescued 
from the same marauding hands. A few years 
later, at the earnest request of the ancient 
chiefs of Rajputana, the British government 
stepped in between them and the predatory 
Mahratta powers of central India, and extend- 
ing to them the shelter of the British alliance 
saved them from being utterly destroyed by 
Scindia and Holkar. In the same way the 
Sikh chiefships of the eastern Punjab were 
saved from the rude military empire built 
up in the Punjab by Ran jit Singh in the first 
half of the nineteenth century. It has with 
perfect truth been said that where in India 
" indigenous political institutions of long 
standing still exist, it is the English who 
saved them from destruction." In those 
parts of India out of which the British 
dominions were formed by the East India 
Company, there were no such institutions 
remaining. They had been swept away by 
Muhammadan rule, which in its effects has 
been likened to a steam roller. The provinces 
which the Company acquired were the 
wreckage of the Mughal empire, lying at the 
disposal of the first comer who could keep 
them. 
The largest states existing to-day, as well 



190 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

as many smaller ones, represent spoil picked 
out of this wreckage by successful military 
leaders in the troublous times of the 
eighteenth century. Of these the more im- 
portant are the Muhammadan state of Hy- 
derabad in the Deccan and the Mahratta 
states of Gwalior, Holkar and Baroda in 
central India. The Hyderabad state repre- 
sents the last remnant of Mughal rule in 
the south, for as has already been men- 
tioned an ancestor of the present ruler 
was the nizam or viceroy of the Delhi 
emperors in the Deccan. He threw off his 
allegiance when the Mughal sceptre passed to 
feeble hands, and when the British appeared 
on the stage in southern India he was an 
independent Muhammadan potentate, ruling 
over a Hindu population by means of a 
mercenary army, largely consisting of Arabs. 
Circumstances brought his state at an early 
date into equal and friendly alliance with the 
Company, and the Nizams have long ranked 
among the most loyal feudatories of the empire. 
On all critical occasions the late Nizam (died 
August 29, 1911) was foremost to proclaim 
his personal devotion to the throne and his 
contentment with British rule. As the 
premier prince of India and the accepted head 
of orthodox Islamism in India his words and 
his attitude have had a great and salutary 
influence on the whole body of Indian Muham- 



THE NATIVE STATES 191 

madans. The Mahratta states now repre- 
sented by Scindia at Gwalior, Holkar at Indore, 
and the Gaikwar at Baroda, arose about the 
same time as the Hyderabad state. Their 
founders were of the Mahratta race, which, 
issuing from the fastnesses of the western 
Ghats under the leadership of Sivaji, pulled 
down the decayed fabric of Mughal rule in 
the south and then swept over central and 
northern India, pillaging and exacting tribute. 
The ancestors of Scindia, Holkar and the 
Gaikwar were successful chiefs in the Mahratta 
confederacy over which the Brahman Peshwa 
or hereditary prime minister of the house of 
Sivaji presided. They possessed themselves 
of extensive tracts of country and asserted a 
general right on the strength of a rescript 
extorted from the captive Delhi emperor to 
levy tribute throughout the empire. They 
were essentially " robber " powers, whose 
idea of rule was to occupy a province with 
mercenary bands and extract the last farthing 
from the wretched cultivators. Between 
them and the British lasting peace on equal 
terms was impossible. The armies that they 
maintained by the proceeds of pillage made 
them for half a century formidable antagonists, 
and a long and complicated struggle, extending 
to every part of India and involving the 
fortunes of other minor native powers, ensued 
before they were subdued and accepted 



192 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

British supremacy. A partial settlement was 
made in 1804 after Sir Arthur Wellesley's vic- 
tories over their forces at Assaye and Argaon. 
But they were left with large possessions and 
armaments, and were allowed a free hand in 
their dealings with other native states in the 
interior of the country with which the Com- 
pany as yet had no connection. At length it 
was found necessary to bring intolerable 
misrule and licence to an end by a complete 
political settlement of central India. This 
was accomplished in 1817 by Lord Moira, 
afterwards the Marquis of Hastings. The 
Rajput and other minor chiefs were placed 
under the immediate protection and guar- 
antee of the British Indian government. The 
Mahratta states were disarmed, pacified and 
shut up within carefully defined limits. The 
roving bands of freebooters that had for years 
harried the country were dispersed or exter- 
minated. The struggle with the Sikhs had 
yet to come ; but it was postponed for thirty 
years. Elsewhere throughout the Indian 
continent the British power was now beyond 
dispute the paramount power. Its right 
and duty to keep the peace of India were 
now universally recognised. "Henceforward 
it became the universal principle of public 
policy that every state in India should 
make over the control of its foreign re- 
lations to the British government, should 



THE NATIVE STATES 193 

submit all external disputes to British 
arbitration, and should defer to British 
advice regarding internal management as 
far as might be necessary." This is 
the keystone of the Indian political 
system. 

Two other examples of the various elements 
composing the native states of India may be 
given. The Kashmir state is Muhammadan 
in population, but the reigning dynasty is 
Hindu. Once an outpost province of the 
Mughal empire it was seized by the Afghans 
on the dissolution of the empire. Ranjit 
Singh, in building up his Sikh kingdom, 
turned the Afghans out of Kashmir, and 
granted it as a fief to one of his generals. 
The British, on the conclusion of the first 
Sikh war, left the grantee in possession 
of his fief and admitted him into alliance 
with them ; and the present ruler of Kashmir 
is descended from the Sikh general. Tonk 
is a small state in Rajputana. It repre- 
sents the booty of an Afghan freebooter 
who for years roamed at large through central 
India at the head of a regular army of foot, 
horse and guns. In the general pacification 
of 1818 he was guaranteed by the British 
government the lands which his descendants 
now hold, as the price of disbanding his 
troops and settling down to peaceful 
pursuits as a native ruler of a native state. 



194 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

The origin of Afghan rule in the Rampur 
state in the United Provinces and in the 
Bhopal state in central India was very- 
similar, though these dynasties are of earlier 
date. 

The nature of the tie between the native 
states and the British government may now 
be considered. Is the tie regulated by inter- 
national or by constitutional law ? Do the 
chiefs exercise the rights of sovereign powers, 
or do they merely occupy a privileged position 
conceded to them by the King in Parliament ? 
Are their territories part of the dominions of 
Great Britain, or external to them ? These 
are theoretical questions about which eminent 
authorities have agreed to differ. They are 
difficult because the relations of the native 
states to the Crown have arisen in different 
ways, because the powers and liberties of the 
states differ very widely, because the British 
government has never clearly defined the posi- 
tion, and because no exact guide is furnished 
by history or by any other country. Also we 
may say that the controversy is largely one 
of words and not of substance. It turns on 
what is meant by " sovereignty." Some 
authorities hold that "sovereignty" must be 
independent and unfettered, and is not 
divisible. Others assert that sovereignty can 
be shared by two parties, and that there is 
such a thing as " semi-sovereignty," If the 



THE NATIVE STATES 195 

first view is right, the native chiefs are not in 
the position of sovereign powers. If the second 
view is right, it is permissible to regard them 
as " semi-sovereign." The second view would 
seem to fit the facts better. The facts not in 
dispute are these. The British government 
is unquestionably the paramount power in 
India. All native chiefs acknowledge its 
supremacy and owe to it allegiance and 
loyalty. No chief enjoys complete external 
and internal sovereignty. No chief can 
declare war or peace, or can negotiate with 
any other chief, much less with a foreign state. 
All chiefs owe obedience to the paramount 
power, and must accept the advice of the resi- 
dent or other authority representing it. Its 
decision has to be accepted as final. Diso- 
bedience pushed to extremes becomes rebellion 
and may lead to the chief being deposed. The 
paramount power determines all questions of 
succession to chiefships and no succession is 
complete until sanctioned. It is both the 
right and the duty of the paramount power 
to interfere to prevent oppression and gross 
misrule and to take such steps as may be 
necessary to that end. The paramount power 
is the 'source of honours ; it regulates 
precedence, fixes salutes, grants titles and 
dignities. Lastly, the principles of inter- 
national law do not apply to its relations with 
the states. 



196 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

The native princes, on the other hand, or the 
more considerable of them, exercise powers 
that are usually regarded as sovereign. They 
make the laws of their own states, they 
appoint the judges and the executive officers, 
they levy taxes, they inflict punishments on 
their subjects. They and their subjects are 
not under the jurisdiction of the courts of 
British India, nor do the laws of British India 
run in their territories. 

It seems consistent with these mutual 
relations to regard the native princes as in 
a position of semi-sovereignty, and this view 
finds support in the utterances of Parliament 
and of the Crown, and in the treaties in which 
the present union originated. Parliament in 
divers statutes has spoken of " the territories 
of any native prince or chief under the 
suzerainty of her Majesty," and of " the 
dominions of princes and states in India in 
alliance with her Majesty." The Queen's 
Proclamation of 1858 announced to the 
I native princes of India " that all treaties and 
engagements made with them by or under the 
|authority of the East India Company are by 
us accepted and will be scrupulously main- 
tained " ; and this promise is repeated by 
Parliament in the statute of 1858 putting an 
end to the Company's rule, which enacted 
that " all treaties made by the said Com- 
pany shall be binding on her Majesty." 



THE NATIVE STATES 197 

As the tie commenced in treaties entered 
into by native rulers who were admittedly 
independent sovereigns, the idea of semi- 
sovereignty is naturally more agreeable to 
the descendants of those men than that 
of a purely Parliamentary or constitutional 
title. 

Sentiment apart, the rights and privileges 
of the princes and chiefs of India are what 
usage, precedent and the interpretation of 
treaties more or less ancient have made them, 
and the surest guarantee that they will not 
be diminished lies in the declared policy of the 
paramount power. Time was when the 
sovereignty of native rulers of India was 
ampler and less fettered than it is to-day, but 
licence only brought destruction. The earliest 
treaties speak of " reciprocal friendship " 
and "mutual alliance." The Company was 
struggling for bare existence, and saw in the 
Nizam of the Deccan and the Mahratta chiefs 
independent states with resources equal to 
or greater than its own. The policy impressed 
upon the Company by Parliament and by 
the Company on its Indian servants was to 
avoid increasing the Company's dominions. 
If the strong states absorbed their weaker 
neighbours that was of no consequence so 
long as the Company's territory was res- 
pected. The Company's business was to 
stake out and stay inside its own boundaries. 



198 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

This policy has been called the policy of 
the " ring fence." It broke down because 
the facts were too strong for it. An ambitious 
and restless native ruler was usually not 
content with absorbing weak neighbours. He 
was sure to collide with the Company or with 
allies of the Company, and then he became a 
danger that had to be suppressed by war on 
a big scale. The policy of the " ring fence " 
received its final blow in 1818 when the Rajput 
chiefs had to be rescued from the grip of the 
" robber " states of the Mahratta confederacy, 
and the general pacification of central India 
undertaken. " Subordinate isolation " was the 
keynote of the new policy. The native states 
henceforth were made subordinate to the 
paramount power, and they were isolated 
from each other. They were required to 
reduce their armies, to submit all disputes 
to the British government, and to accept its 
decisions. But in respect of internal affairs 
there was to be no interference with the 
authority of the chiefs. In the event of 
extreme misrule the chief was liable to be 
deposed and his state annexed. But until 
he reached that point, he was not pulled up. 
Under this system native rule went from bad 
to worse. The king of Oudh was deposed 
and his kingdom suppressed. It seemed to 
be only a question of time when the same fate 
would befall other considerable states. Many 



THE NATIVE STATES 199 

officials, including Lord Dalhousie, were so im- 
pressed by the incurable viciousness of native 
rule that they welcomed every occasion for ex- 
tinguishing it. For this reason, when a Hindu 
chief died without male issue the general rule 
was to refuse to allow an adopted son to 
succeed. The important states of Satara, 
Nagpur, and Jhansi in this way lapsed 
to the British Government. What with 
annexation on account of misrule and 
" lapse " on failure of heirs the outlook for 
native states was black. The upheaval of 
the great Indian mutiny and the transfer 
of India to the Crown led to a new and better 
policy. 

This policy has been called the policy of 
" union and co-operation." The native states 
were no longer regarded as nuisances meriting 
removal. They were guaranteed security of 
existence, invited and assisted to undertake 
the task of self-improvement. The first step 
was to disarm suspicion and distrust. This 
was done by the Queen's Proclamation and by 
Lord Canning's " adoption sanads." A sanad 
is a royal warrant. Those granted by Lord 
Canning to the native chiefs of India gave 
them the assurance that the British Crown 
desired that their governments should be 
perpetuated, and to this end undertook to 
confirm in the case of Hindu states the 
succession of an adopted son ; and in the 



200 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

case of Muhammadan states any succession 
legitimate according to Muhammadan law. 
" Be assured," the sanad ended, " that 
nothing shall disturb the engagement just 
made to you so long as your house is loyal 
to the Crown, and faithful to the condi- 
tions of the treaties, grants and engage- 
ments which record its obligations to the 
British government." 

Thus a great burden was removed from 
the minds of Indian princes. But time was 
necessary to satisfy them that the new policy 
would endure and be liberally interpreted. 
Was misrule to be made the occasion for 
annexation ? If so, what house would long 
survive ? The answer was given in the two 
test cases of Baroda and Mysore. In 1875 the 
chief of the Baroda state was deposed on 
account of notorious misconduct and gross 
misgovernment. His issue was excluded from 
the succession. The state might have been 
annexed, but as a special favour the widow of 
the chief's predecessor was permitted to adopt 
as her son a boy selected by the British 
government from the Gaikwar family. The 
boy was carefully educated, and during his 
prolonged minority the state was administered 
under the direct control of the resident by 
a staff of picked officials. The present ruler 
of Baroda owes his position to this act of 
clemency. It has already been mentioned 



THE NATIVE STATES 201 

that on the overthrow of Tipu Sultan the old 
Hindu line of pricnes was restored in Mysore. 
The Chief thus installed proved incapable and 
drove his subjects into rebellion. He was set 
aside and the country was placed under the 
direct administration of British officials with- 
out being actually annexed. On his death in 
1868 the British recognised his adopted son, 
a child of eight, as his successor. In 1881, 
when the boy attained his majority, the 
country was formally restored to him by 
a deed of transfer, which is often referred 
to as containing the most complete state- 
ment of the relations subsisting between 
the government of British India and its 
feudatories. 

The maintenance of the states of Baroda 
and Mysore in circumstances favouring annex- 
ation went far to dispel the doubts of the 
Indian princes as to the intentions of the 
paramount power. These doubts were deeply 
rooted. The exclamation, " It will soon be 
all red," attributed to Maharaja Ranjit 
Singh, the Sikh ruler of the Punjab, on being 
shown a map of India on which the Company's 
possessions were shown in that colour, 
represented for a long time after the Queen's 
Proclamation the innermost sentiment of 
native courts. Something more was needed 
to inspire not merely confidence, but warmth 
of feeling. A foreign Government may com- 



202 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

mand respect, but so long as it is a colourless 
abstraction it does not excite affection. 
Parliament and the constitutional tie convey 
little to the oriental mind ; but it readily 
responds to the ideas of a personal sovereign 
and loyalty to an ancient and exalted Crown. 
The gracious words of Queen Victoria's 
Proclamation touched the hearts and the 
imagination of the chiefs. The impression 
deepened as the long reign stretched into the 
half-century, and the personality of the great 
Queen beyond the seas grew more distinct. 
The assumption in 1877 of the title of " Em- 
press of India " was in complete harmony 
with this sentiment, as was also the stately 
ceremonial of the Delhi Assemblage of the 
same year v/hen the new title was proclaimed. 
" It is with the wish," said Lord Lytton to the 
assembled chiefs, " to confirm the confidence 
and to perpetuate the intimacy of the relations 
now so happUy uniting the British Crown 
and its feudatories and allies, that her Majesty 
has been graciously pleased to assume the 
Imperial title we proclaim to-day." The 
new title in no way altered the constitutional 
relations of the British government and the 
chiefs. But titles and ceremonies have their 
value as giving colour and warmth to common- 
place relationships. There is no doubt that 
in the personal tie the princes and chiefs 
of India " found themselves," as it were. 



THE NATIVE STATES 203 

It has given them a dignified and acceptable 
position in the empire, and it commands 
their loyalty and allegiance in a way 
that directly appeals to their most venerated 
traditions. 

The position of an Indian prince is in many 
respects an enviable one. The more con- 
siderable princes have large and increasing 
revenues. They are exempt from the 
obligation of providing for the external 
defence of their states. They and their 
subjects enjoy all the material improvements 
that have been made in British India. They 
benefit from the railways, roads, harbours, 
telegraphs, postal and other services which the 
capital and credit of the British Indian govern- 
ment have created, and for which the subjects 
of that Government have paid. Beyond fixed 
tributes of very moderate amount they make 
no direct contribution to the British Indian 
treasury. They are secured in the peaceful 
possession of their states by the guarantee 
of the British government. They may govern 
as they please as long as they do not violently 
depart from the traditional standard of 
administration, or grossly misgovern. Their 
power is unfettered by constitutional checks, 
and their will absolute. In the management 
of their estates they have an ample field for 
healthy activity, and they have in their 
union with the paramount power a direct 



204 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

interest in the larger affairs of the Indian 
empire. They are often invited to co-operate 
with the British Indian government in 
undertakings for the common good of India 
or a portion of India. Now it is a joint 
canal, now a railway serving their states and 
British districts, now a college or a postal 
or telegraph service. A wise and intelligent 
prince, and there are many such and the 
number increases, is as happily placed as 
regards public affairs as any statesman or 
potentate in the world. 

There are no doubt drawbacks. The calm 
world has its cankers. Wars and forays 
and kingdom-snatching are no more. Sub- 
ordinate union implies restraint, however 
light and delicate the chain may be. The 
British political officer or resident, who is 
the agent of the British Indian government, 
and the channel of communication between 
it and the native ruler, has to be kept informed 
of the affairs of the state, and has to advise 
the chief in a more or less authoritative 
manner. Often the relations of the resident 
and the chief are all that could be desired. 
The resident is the trusted friend and helpful 
counsellor. The chief has nothing to conceal 
or to be ashamed of, and the resident has 
no call nor wish to interfere, and is on good 
terms with all men. But sometimes matters 
are different, and then the curb is felt and 



THE NATIVE STATES 205 

the situation is uncomfortable. The general 
policy of the Indian government and its 
agents is to interfere as little as possible 
with the internal administration of the 
states, and to overlook practices and methods 
which would not be tolerated in British 
districts. But as the level of morality, 
public and private, rises in British India, 
backward states show up more sharply and 
become more difficult to defend. "It is 
easy," said Lord Minto, when as Viceroy 
he made a speech at the capital of the Udaipur 
state that was read as a gentle lecture to 
over-active residents, " to over-estimate the 
value of administrative efficiency," and he 
went on to say that " the methods sanctioned 
by tradition in states are usually well adapted 
to the needs and relations of the ruler and his 
people." The exceptions create the difficulty. 
In the past British residents have been 
unable to overlook torture, nose-splitting and 
ear-lopping, flogging to death and other 
inhuman practices having the sanction of 
tradition in certain states. And though 
such excesses are rare now, the march of 
progress in India as a whole is constantly 
exposing deficiencies in the administration 
of states that refuse to move with the 
times. 

M. Joseph Chailly, in his Adminis' 
trative Problems of British India, has divided 



206 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

the Indian princes into three classes : the 
intensely conservative, narrow-minded prince 
who entrenches himself in the customs and 
privileges of his ancestors and refuses to 
reform ; the enthusiastic " young India " 
chiefs, who discard their own vernaculars 
for English, abandon their natural dress, 
forsake their religion and its consecrated 
practices, and cross the sea every two or three 
years in spite of caste rules ; and the moderate 
" young India " chiefs, who advance more 
cautiously, reverence and defend religion 
and caste, and admit of no change which 
would be in conflict with its institutions. 
The latter, he says, " only ask from Europe 
its material institutions, its educational 
methods, and, it may be, its philanthropic 
morality ; at bottom they remain Indians, 
whether Hindus, Musulmans or Sikhs." 
His conclusion is that the pace towards 
progress will be that of the moderate " young 
India " party, advancing slowly and steadily, 
without violent movement to the front or 
to the rear. This is precisely what the best 
friends of the princes and chiefs, who value 
their conservative influence upon Indian 
society, and admire them as the natural pro- 
duct of the country, would desire. To retain 
that influence in a moving India there must 
needs be some advance. M. Chailly's cautious 
statement that " there has been substantial 



THE NATIVE STATES 207 

progress in the administration of several 
of the more advanced states " ; and that 
" these states and their chiefs are showing 
themselves accessible to sentiments of praise 
and blame," is fully warranted by the 
facts. 



CHAPTER IX 

ADMINISTRATIVE PROBLEMS 

A CIVILISED government, by which is meant a 
government which keeps steadily in view the 
welfare of its subjects and works for their 
betterment on a settled plan, is never without 
its problems and its difficulties. Of these 
the Indian government has its full share. 
Some of these are common to civilised and 
progressive rule as such ; others are peculiar 
to British rule in India. 

A general idea of these problems may be 
gathered from what has been said in the 
preceding sections regarding the past of 
India and the present condition of its peoples. 
In a rough classification they fall into three 
groups ; problems of external defence, prob- 
lems of internal administration and problems 
of political or constitutional development. 

For many years the existence of British 
rule in India was bound up with the problem 
of external defence. The primary care of 
the British was to obtain and hold defensible 

218 



ADMINISTRATIVE PROBLEMS 209 

frontiers. At first they were sought within 
India itself, but as British dominion grew, 
the lines of defence were pushed beyond 
India proper towards Afghanistan and Persia 
on the west, and Siam and the French posses- 
sions on the east. From time to time all 
other matters of government have had to be 
subordinated to the imperious needs of 
external defence. These needs still make 
heavy calls upon the finances of the country. 
The insurance of the peace of three hundred 
millions of people is not a small affair. Happily 
of late years the course of events in Afghani- 
stan and Russia has been favourable to the 
security of India, and for the present at least 
the problem of external defence may be said 
to be satisfactorily met. 

Recent changes and improvements have 
made the Indian army one of the most 
efficient in the world. Its distribution over 
the vast area which it holds is the result 
of the most careful thought, and its armaments 
and equipment are in accordance with the 
latest military ideas. The problems that 
it suggests are not concerned with the 
possibility of making it a more efficient force, 
but with its strength, its composition and its 
cost. The regular army in India consists 
of about two hundred and thirty-five thousand 
men, British troops being to native troops 
in the proportion of one to two. Judged by 



210 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

European standards, it is one of the smallest 
armies in the world for the duties which it 
has to perform, these duties being to preserve 
international peace and to defend India 
against aggression. Many military experts 
consider it dangerously small. On the other 
hand, it is from its composition necessarily 
an expensive army, and its composition could 
not be altered without danger to its efficiency. 
The ratio of one British soldier to two Indian 
soldiers is fundamental. To maintain a 
voluntary army of seventy-five thousand 
British troops — the present strength of the 
British army in India — means a good rate 
of pay and liberal concessions of various 
kinds, all costing money. ,The large staff of 
British officers required for these troops and 
for the native army has also to be raised on 
the voluntary system, and at market rates 
of pay. Thus the British element in the 
army in India is expensive. To increase it 
would increase recruiting difficulties in this 
country, besides largely adding to the military 
burdens of India. But without an increase 
in the British troops employed in India there 
can be no increase in the total strength of 
the regular army in India. The present 
strength has, therefore, to be regarded as a 
maximum, and the Indian government's 
chief concern is to satisfy civilian critics that 
the strength is not excessive. Some Indian 



ADMINISTRATIVE PROBLEMS 211 

members of the Viceroy's legislative council, 
in their anxiety to see a larger part of the 
public revenues spent on education and other 
social services, question the necessity for the 
present scale of military expenditure. Their 
contention is that twenty-one millions sterling 
for the army out of a total public expenditure 
of seventy-eight millions sterling is dispropor- 
tionate to the relative needs of external 
defence and internal administration. We may 
sympathise with the advocates of a small 
and cheap army, yet may doubt whether 
they fully realise the risks to which an in- 
sufficiently defended India would be exposed. 
A generation that has known peace only is 
apt to view it as a thing easily come by. 

The defence of India is the defence of the 
north-west frontier. The possible sources 
of danger are three : the independent Pathan 
tribes interposed between British India and 
Afghanistan, the kingdom of Afghanistan, 
and the Russian empire. Speaking generally, 
the method of dealing with the problems 
involved in the defence of the frontier has been 
to isolate each danger spot and treat it separ- 
ately. With Russia a treaty was made in 
1907, which so long as it endures relieves 
India of anxiety from this quarter. With 
those of its provisions that relate to Persia 
we are not here concerned, except in so far 
as they prevent strife between England and 



212 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

Russia which might react on India. Those 
relating to Afghanistan place that kingdom 
definitely within the sphere of British influence 
and renounce Russian ambitions in that 
direction. Afghanistan is thus isolated and 
can no longer play one of its great neighbours 
against the other. It is true that the treaty 
provisions regarding Afghanistan do not come 
formally into force until the assent of the 
Amir has been obtained, and that so far the 
Amir has not assented. But virtually they are 
in force, for the two governments are acting 
upon them. Lastly, between Afghanistan and 
British India a long stretch of mountainous 
country inhabited by tribes akin to the races 
of Afghanistan has, by an arrangement 
made in 1893 with the late Amir, been 
brought under British control and constituted 
a protectorate. They are thus isolated from 
Afghanistan, and though they are permitted 
to retain complete independence and indulge 
in blood-feuds, murder and tribal warfare 
to their hearts' content, the control is sufficient 
to keep the peace of the border and to allow 
the inflow of civilising influences. There are 
seasons of unrest when the independent 
tribes and their kinsmen in Afghanistan 
seem inclined to make common cause against 
the infidel in India, and to rush into war. 
Such a war would be a very serious matter, 
as the whole border land is now armed with 



ADMINISTRATIVE PROBLEMS 213 

modern weapons as at no former time. But 
the influences making for peace are many and 
their strength increases. Viewed as a whole, 
the problems of the external defence of India 
do not at present give cause for anxiety. 

The problems of internal administration, 

on the other hand, tend to become more 

urgent and more intricate. We may liken 

India when it came under British rule to a 

vast domain taken over in a state of complete 

dilapidation. It was without any of the 

appliances or furniture of a civilised state. 

The first efforts of the new rulers were directed 

to meeting its most pressing necessities. 

Codes of law, courts of justice, police and 

prisons, a trained civil service were gradually 

provided. Roads were made, and these were 

followed by railways, postal and telegraph 

services. Then the great rivers were taken 

in hand and made to provide irrigation on 

a scale far exceeding anything known in the 

world's history. Comparing India as it was 

at the time of the mutiny with present-day 

India, we might be inclined to say that its 

transformation into a modern state was now 

complete. But as an explorer may climb 

a hill only to find the prospect blocked by 

higher summits, so the Indian government 

as the result of its labours is faced by new 

demands and problems. It has met in a 

fairly satisfactory way the needs of a modern 



214 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

state and prepared India for the industrial 
revolution which every progressive com- 
munity must sooner or later pass through. 
The country can now pass, and in fact is 
now passing, from the simple agricultural 
stage to modern organised industries and 
world-wide commerce. But the transition 
both reveals defects and creates new wants. 
The Indian government is held responsible 
for these defects, and is expected to satisfy 
these wants. 

The industrial change that is passing over 
India is of a twofold kind. In the first place, 
the agriculture of the village community is 
no longer governed by local conditions and 
restricted to supplying the requirements 
of the inhabitants or the immediate neigh- 
bourhood. Sixty years ago the wheat or 
cotton grown in the village was consumed 
locally. There were no roads, much less 
railways. Now thousands of tons of Indian 
produce are sold in London before it has 
actually been harvested. In the Punjab some 
millions of acres of once barren land in districts 
as rainless as Egypt have been brought under 
cultivation by means of great canals drawn 
from the snow-fed rivers, and everywhere 
else a similar speeding up of agriculture 
to supply the demands of distant countries 
may be observed. This marked change in 
the rural economy of India is due primarily 



ADMINISTRATIVE PROBLEMS 215 

to canals and railways, secondly to an all- 
round improvement in trading facilities (har- 
bours, docks, posts, and telegraphs), and 
thirdly, to the stimulus which peace and 
justice give to commercial enterprise. 

The other and more important change is 
the rise of large modern industries in India. 
As yet these are confined to a few centres, 
but in the judgment of many persons the 
movement is but beginning. In and around 
Calcutta there are numerous jute mills rivalling 
those of Dundee, and in Bombay over two 
hundred cotton mills which compete success- 
fully with those of Lancashire. In Burma 
there are many rice mills for the husking 
and polishing of rice, and in all parts of 
India small factories of different kinds are 
springing up. Coal is extensively mined in 
Bengal and in two other provinces, and a 
huge iron and steel plant is being put down 
in a district where inexhaustible quantities 
of good iron-stone exist. "The germ of 
manufacture on modern lines," Sir Theo- 
dore MoRisoN writes, in describing the 
industrial transition of India, " has already 
been planted, and has shown a wonderful 
capacity to thrive in an Indian environment." 

Changes of this kind coming over a 
population of more than three hundred 
millions create serious administrative 
problems. The change in agriculture has 



216 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDLl 

affected many interests. Land has greatly 
increased in value. The great landlords 
desire higher rents ; the trading and pro- 
fessional classes seek to acquire estates from 
the peasant proprietors. Two evils have 
arisen. The poor and ignorant cultivator 
is rack-rented or evicted. The peasant owner 
is induced to involve himself in debt and 
ultimately to part with his land. The 
problem of protecting the tenant against 
the landlord and the small owner against the 
money-lender is in some form or other always 
before the Indian government. Probably in 
no country has it been studied more closely 
or more frequently dealt with by legislation. 
There is a special reason for this over and 
above the importance of maintaining agri- 
culture, the paramount industry of India, 
in a sound and healthy condition. The 
Indian government, in accordance with 
immemorial usage, is theoretically the owner 
of all land in India. It has relinquished a 
large part of its theoretical rights, and land 
is owned by private persons and is bought 
and sold as in this country. But it still 
retains the right to a share in the produce. 
This share is not defined by law and might 
be such as to absorb all the profits of agricul- 
ture and make private ownership valueless. 
Under former native governments (and still 
in some native states) this has actually 



ADMINISTRATIVE PROBLEMS 217 

occurred. But in British India the govern- 
ment of its own free will has reduced its 
demand to a very moderate land-tax. The 
rules under which the " land revenue," as 
it is called, is assessed, are very technical 
and cannot here be described. But the 
broad result is that owners of land in India, 
after paying the land-tax, are left with very 
considerable profits. In the irrigation colonies 
of the Punjab, for instance, the selling price 
of land subject to the land-tax is £10 and 
upwards the acre. No one would give this 
price for land if the dues upon it were ex- 
cessive. The policy of the Indian government 
is to keep the land assessment low for the 
encouragement of the cultivator and the 
small owner. But its policy would be nullified 
if owners of large estates were to rack-rent 
their tenants, or if the small owners were 
wheedled out of their ancestral acres by 
the money-lending classes. Therefore the 
government is always vigilant and ready 
to step in with protective laws. Each province 
has its special tenancy law, the general aim 
of which is to secure to the tenants fair rents 
and freedom from arbitrary eviction ; and 
in some provinces, where the land is owned 
not by large landlords but by petty peasant 
proprietors, its transfer to the money-lending 
and trading castes is prohibited. 
There are many other problems connected 



218 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

with the land and the state's stake in it. 
The Indian cultivator has many good qualities, 
but he is often without sufficient capital and 
might make more of the land with better 
seed and appliances. The government lends 
him money, has started co-operative credit 
societies which promise well, and employs 
agricultural experts to instruct and advise 
him. Again, the periodical revision of the 
land assessments (they run from twenty to 
thirty years in the different provinces) is 
a serious and weighty undertaking. Moderate 
as these assessments are, the strict exaction 
of the land-tax in bad seasons would be 
ruinous to the small owner. The policy, 
therefore, is to postpone the collection of 
the tax in such seasons, or even to remit 
it. All this involves an immense amount 
of inspection and regulation. Very serious 
problems also arise in connection with the 
great irrigation canals that spread their 
branches over the face of the country, changing 
the character of the cultivation, the value 
of the land and the habits of the agriculturists. 
The settlement of a million colonists on the 
once desert lands of the Chenab canal in the 
south-western Punjab was an operation of 
infinite difficulty and responsibility. The 
revenue and the irrigation officers had to 
lay out fields and vUlages, select colonists 
of the proper class, settle the conditions on 



ADMINISTRATIVE PROBLEMS 219 

which land would be granted, fix fair rates 
in payment of water supplied, establish 
markets and construct roads, found townships, 
and organise and set going a new society. 
What was done on a large scale in the case 
of the Chenab canal is done on a smaller 
scale wherever the beneficent but disturbing 
influence of a new canal is felt. The revenue 
officer, as he is called, and his subordinates 
are much more than a tax-collecting agency. 
They represent the state in its capacity as a 
co-owner and co-manager of the land of 
India. They are concerned with everything 
that affects the welfare of the occupiers of the 
public estate, or that tends to its improvement 
or detriment. No department of the state 
touches the peasant so closely or at so many 
points as the land revenue administration. 
And the Indian peasant, as Lord Curzon said 
in his farewell speech in Bombay, is " the bone 
and sinew of the country," the first and final 
object of the government's regard. 

Another set of problems is created by the 
growth of trade and industries and the great 
overseas traffic of India. In the first place 
there is the problem of the overcrowded and 
insanitary city. It is serious enough in this 
country. It is much graver in Calcutta and 
Bombay. Into these and other large towns 
a poor and ignorant population has been 
rapidly drawn from country villages, with 



220 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

little thought for its accommodation and 
decent living. Travellers have often described 
the almost inconceivable overcrowding and 
wretchedness of the " chawls " or tenement 
blocks of Bombay and the dismal squalor 
of Calcutta and Rangoon. Matters are 
improving, for the baneful results of past 
neglect are now recognised, and the govern- 
ment has come to the help of the municipal 
corporations with money and skilled advice, 
and has induced them to accept city improve- 
ment schemes on large and well-considered 
lines. But time has been lost and a great 
deal of leeway has to be made good. 
In other respects also the conditions of 
factory life in India are bad. The Indian 
factory hand is an agriculturist temporarily 
attracted to the town by relatively high 
wages. His object is to earn as much as 
he can within a short time, spend on himself 
as little as need be, and to return with his 
savings to his village. He is an easy victim 
to overtime and excessive hours, and will 
live uncomplainingly in the vilest hovel amid 
infinite dirt and discomfort. He is ignorant, 
weak, and unorganised. The inquiries of the 
Factory Labour Commission showed that in 
most Indian factories since the introduction of 
electric light the working hours had been 
grossly excessive, and child labour greatly 
abused. A new Factory Act has now definitely 



ADMINISTRATIVE PROBLEMS 221 

fixed the hours of labour for all classes of 
operatives and in other ways improved 
their position. But very much remains to 
be done before the modern industries of 
India or the condition of life in the great 
towns can be regarded with satisfaction. 

The insanitary and congested city is only a 
part of the general problem of the public 
health in India. The problem is raised 
with increasing persistence by the industrial 
development of the country. The now close 
connection of India with the outer world 
inevitably calls attention to its sanitary 
condition, and its sanitary condition is 
unfortunately bad. Time was when pesti- 
lence and epidemic disease in India were 
thought to affect India alone. Now they 
are matters of international concern. When 
plague or cholera is active in India, Europe 
grows restive and threatens to close its ports 
to Indian vessels or to subject them to strict 
quarantine. During the last fifteen years 
India has suffered from a terrible visitation 
of plague. Imported from China in 1896 
the disease has fastened itself on the domestic 
rat of India, and is passed from these animals 
to human beings. It defies the efforts of the 
doctors, has occasioned upwards of seven 
million deaths, and has been the cause of 
unspeakable misery and wretchedness. An 
epidemic of the kind so protracted and so 



222 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

widespread seems an outrage upon civilisation. 
It has added greatly to the strength of the 
outside demand that strenuous efforts should 
be made to improve the public health of 
India. But the problem is one of immense 
difficulty. At first sight the improvement 
of the Indian village seems a simple matter 
compared with the more complicated case 
of the cities. But it is not as easy as it looks. 
It is not merely a question of drainage or 
water supply, but of a radical change in the 
general standard of living and in the habits and 
prejudices of centuries. The money difficulty 
alone is formidable, but the social and political 
difficulty is greater. It has been said that 
the East does not particularly want our 
drain-pipes, and that its ideals of comfort 
and cleanliness are not ours. And yet 
without the co-operation of the people sani- 
tary reform in rural India will make little 
progress. In this matter the Indian adminis- 
tration is between two fires. On the one 
side the commerce, the science, the humanity 
of Europe blame it for apathy and timidity. 
On the other hand, its own officers warn it 
that nothing is more unpopular with the 
masses than sanitary reform, and that no 
great improvement is possible until this 
attitude is changed. 

How can this change be brought about? 
Mainly, it is believed, by means of education. 



ADMINISTRATIVE PROBLEMS 223 

Of all administrative problems the improve- 
ment and diffusion of education in India 
is probably the one that at the present 
moment weighs most heavily with the govern- 
ment. Most of the difficulties which modern 
India presents have their roots in the ignorance 
or defective education of the people. The 
masses have far too little education ; the 
education of the minority is gravely defective. 
" It cannot," said Lord Curzon, in address- 
ing the educational conference convened by 
him at Simla in 1901, " be a right thing that 
three out of every four country villages 
should still be without a school, and that 
not much more than three million boys, or 
less than one-fifth of the total boys of school- 
going age, should be in receipt of primary 
education." And he put the urgency of the 
problem in the following words : " What is 
the greatest danger in India ? What is the 
source of suspicion, superstition, outbreaks, 
crime, yes, and also of much of the agrarian 
discontent and suffering among the masses ? 
It is ignorance. And what is the only antidote 
to ignorance ? Knowledge. In proportion 
as we teach the masses, so shall we make their 
lot happier, and in proportion as they are 
happier, so they will become more useful 
members of the body politic." The impulse 
given by Lord Curzon to elementary education 
has led to a notable increase in the number 



224 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

of schools. There are now nearly four million 
boys attending elementary schools. But this 
larger number still leaves some ten or twelve 
million boys to be accounted for, while 
the girl population of India is still practically 
uneducated. The figures convey some idea 
of the magnitude of the problem, but they 
do not adequately express its difficulty. 
Even if there were money and teachers 
enough to provide a school in every village, 
the inclination to make use of it would still 
have to be created among the masses. Rural 
India stoutly disbelieves in education. In 
the existing schools there are many vacant 
places solely because the peasant prefers 
to keep his sons at home, and dreads the 
effects of books on their habits and character. 
These conservative ideas are weakening and 
will weaken ; but for the present they are 
an obstacle that none aware of the delicate 
task of ruling India would wish to ignore. 
Free, compulsory, universal education for 
the population of India is still a long way off. 
But it is an ideal that will have to be kept 
in sight and followed as time and circumstance 
permit, if India is to make the best of 
the new industrial conditions now opening 
to it. 

Equally important and pressing is the 
problem of the reform of the higher education 
in India. The existing system is the frequent 



ADMINISTRATIVE PROBLEMS 225 

subject of attack. It is said to be " mechani- 
cal, lifeless, perverted " ; to fail to form 
character or to produce useful citizens ; 
to be based on a low standard of teaching 
and a lower standard of learning ; to en- 
courage cram and to discourage thought. 
Mr. H. R. James, whose position and experi- 
ence as the head of the presidency college, 
Calcutta, qualify him to speak with some 
authority, has examined these charges in a 
recent work. Education and Statesmanship 
in India, and maintains with some reason 
that they are unnecessarily severe, and 
that they do not sufficiently allow for 
the adverse conditions with which higher 
education in India has had to contend. 
But however that may be, Mr. James 
frankly admits the many serious deficiencies 
of Indian high schools and colleges and of the 
university system, and acknowledges that 
out of the reforms begun by Lord Curzon 
" has been born a new life for higher education 
in India." One of these reforms was the 
passing of an Act that remodelled the con- 
stitutions of the four Indian universities. 
Others were concerned with the improvement 
of the teaching, the buildings and the 
apparatus of the schools and colleges ; with 
lightening the burden of the examination 
system, discouraging cram and making the 
courses of study more useful and more 



226 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

intelligible to Indian students; and lastly, 
with better provision for scientific, engineering, 
medical and other technical instruction. 
Reforms of this kind are not completed in 
a day. The improvement of secondary and 
higher education in India has, in fact, only 
commenced. To carry it through will make 
large demands both on the government and 
on the public spirit of the community. 

But better sanitation and better education 
do not exhaust the needs of new India. The 
progress of the country makes many other 
calls upon the administration. Now it is 
demanded that the police should be reconsti- 
tuted and made more efiicient ; or it is com- 
plained that the courts of justice and the 
staff of judges are unable to cope with 
the volume of work before them, or that the 
revenue establishments are found to be over- 
worked and underpaid ; or again the hospitals 
and dispensaries are said to be below the 
standard of modern requirements. All these 
demands mean money. Behind all the special 
administrative problems is the fundamental 
problem of insufficient revenues. The Indian 
government is in the difficult position of 
having to meet the needs of a modem state 
from the slender resources of an oriental 
community. Taxation in India, judged by 
European standards, is very low. There are 
no death or estate duties. The land-tax is 



ADMINISTRATIVE PROBLEMS 227 

not oppressive, not exceeding an average rate 
of two shillings the acre ; and as a set off 
against it incomes derived from land or agri- 
culture are exempt from income-tax. The 
latter tax at the rate of abont sixpence in the 
pound consequently yields little. The remain- 
ing tax revenue is derived chiefly from drugs 
and alcohol, the customs duties at the ports, 
stamp duties on deeds and documents, and 
salt. The salt duty, which is often stigma- 
tised as a peculiarly wrong and oppressive 
tax, has of late years been largely reduced, 
and now is less than one farthing the pound. 
The poor man pays in the course of the year 
between two and three pence on account of salt 
duty, and possibly threepence on account of 
customs duties on imported articles. If he does 
not drink and refrains from litigation, this is 
the extent of his taxation. Over the whole 
population, rich and poor, the taxation, exclu- 
sive of the land-tax, is less than two shillings 
a head. But light as this may seem, every 
farthing subtracted from incomes as small 
as those of the masses of the Indian population 
is seriously felt. This alone is a good reason 
for not adding to the present burden of tax- 
ation ; while a second reason lies in the very 
limited range of possible taxes. It is certain 
that the Indian government could spend five 
or ten millions a year more than at present on 
education, sanitation and other social services. 

H2 



228 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

Yet that sum could not be obtained without 
largely increasing the salt tax and the customs 
duties, both of which fall upon the general 
body of the population. The Indian govern- 
ment is thus on the horns of a dilemma. The 
field of administrative reforms and material 
progress is unlimited ; the field of taxation 
is very restricted. As the revenue under each 
head is steadily growing with the growing 
wealth of the country, the future might be 
viewed with confidence but for one thing. 
In addition to the tax revenues of India the 
Indian government has long enjoyed large 
profits from the opium trade with China. 
Of late the profit has been about three millions 
a year. We need not enter into the question 
of the morality of this trade, as it will shortly 
be a thing of the past. The important point 
is that the Indian government at a time 
when it is hard pressed to find money for 
social services of every kind is about to 
sustain a serious loss of income. The gains 
may have been ill-gotten, but they have 
proved very useful in the past, and their loss 
will be felt. 

The progress of what may be called the 
business undertakings of the Indian Govern- 
ment is fortunately not dependent on the 
taxation problem. Railways, canals, docks, 
harbours and the like are profit earning works 
for which money may properly be borrowed. 



ADMINISTRATIVE PROBLEMS 229 

The credit of the Indian Government is good, 
and it is able to borrow money at a low rate of 
interest for its public works. The use of 
English capital on easy terms is one of the 
many advantages which India derives from 
the British connection. The remittance of 
interest to the foreign creditor is sometimes 
regarded as an injury to India, and is called 
a " drain " on its resources. But it is certain 
that the great undertakings which have been 
carried out in India by means of foreign capital 
have increased greatly the wealth of the 
country, and are no burden on the tax-payer. 
After payment of all interest charges the 
railways and canals of India give a net surplus 
to the state. The public debt of India, other 
than that incurred for profit-earning public 
works, is extremely small, and is yearly 
diminishing. 

This account, necessarily brief and imper- 
fect, of the more pressing problems of Indian 
internal administration, must suffice. A few 
words must be said about the constitutional 
problem. 

British rule in India has been described as 
a gigantic machine for managing the entire 
public business of one-fifth of the inhabitants 
of the earth without their leave and without 
their help. The description has at no time 
been exact; it is now altogether incorrect. 
From the first the people have been associated 



230 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

with the British power in the government of 
the country. The guidance and the driving 
force were of foreign origin, but they would 
have availed nothing without the willing and 
intelligent service of many thousands of 
Indians of all ranks and capacities. Though 
in form autocratic, the British Indian gov- 
ernment has always been very sensitive to 
the sentiments, the interests, and even the 
prejudices of the people ; the people^ to use 
Lord Curzon's phrase, including the " patient, 
humble, silent millions " of peasants, the 
eighty per cent, of the population who have 
no policies and who read no newspapers. 
The British Indian government long tolerated 
suttee and female infanticide. It still tolerates 
social and religious practices that offend the 
conscience of Europe. It has rarely moved 
without first exploring the shallows and 
sounding the depths of Indian opinion. If it 
has sometimes seemed cold and critically dis- 
posed to proposed changes, it has reflected the 
traditional conservatism of the people at 
large. 

Of recent years the active association of the 
governed with the government has greatly 
increased. The country is covered with a net- 
work of local and municipal boards and 
corporations, constituted on a representative 
basis and exercising self-governing powers. 
These bodies are not free from ojBdcial control. 



ADMINISTRATIVE PROBLEMS 231 

but the policy is to relax it as the level of 
public morality and public spirit rises. The 
educative effect of local self-government is 
very noticeable in the larger towns. A day 
spent in Calcutta or Bombay woidd reveal 
the extent to which local administration is in 
the hands of the community. The visitor 
would commence his studies at a meeting of 
the municipal corporation or the city improve- 
ment trust. He would pass to a sitting of the 
senate of the provincial university, and end 
with a debate in the provincial legislative 
council. He would find in these assemblies 
the Indians more numerous than the Euro- 
peans, complete freedom of debate, fearless 
criticism of the administration. The official 
view might possibly, in most cases, prevail, 
but not without modifications and con- 
cessions. He would conclude that Indians 
take a large, active and influential part in 
public affairs, and in the making of the laws 
under which they live. He would come to 
the further conclusion that though the govern- 
ment in its different branches is essentially 
government by officials, or a " bureaucracy," 
the vast majority of the officials are 
Indians. 

The constitutional reforms associated with 
the names of Lord Minto and Lord Morley 
are the natural outgrowth of a continuous 
policy. That policy has been to associate 



232 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

the people of India with the government more 
and more closely, as time and circumstance 
permitted, while since maintaining, in the 
common interest of India and England, the 
strength and unity of the executive power. 



CHAPTER X 

POLITICAL AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 

In the last section we tried to dip, as it were, 
into the mind of the Indian government, and 
to get some idea of the problems that occupy 
its thoughts. To examine the collective 
mind of the Indian people and take stock of 
its contents is a far more difficult and delicate 
task. All that can be attempted is to indicate 
very briefly and generally the more important 
movements visible on the surface of the 
multitudinous life of India. 

Society, religion, the state are the three 
influences to which each individual member 
of a community is hourly subject. They 
shape his life, his thoughts, and his aspirations. 
By society we mean what is sometimes called 
*' social environment " ; that is, the social 
system in which he finds his place and the 
economic conditions which determine his 
material well-being. The peculiarity of the 
social system of India is that it is regulated 
by the institution of " caste " ; while the 

233 



234 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

economic conditions of India are those of an 
archaic agricultural community which is 
beginning to feel the impact of world-wide 
commerce, and in the midst of which modern 
industries are in the act of establishing 
themselves. 

In western countries it is possible to 
distinguish social and economic forces from 
religious forces, and to estimate their effect 
separately ; and generally it may be said that 
the former have a more direct influence than 
the latter, because they affect the larger part 
of life. In India it is difficult to make this 
distinction, as the whole structure of Indian 
society and to a large extent the economic 
conditions of Indian life are based upon reli- 
gion. With us there is no necessary connection 
between a man's religion and his occupation or 
place in society. In India, at least among 
the Hindus who form the bulk of the popula- 
tion, caste determines each man's vocation, 
and his actions from the cradle to the grave ; 
and caste as an institution is a bundle of 
religious precepts and prohibitions. We read 
in Tennyson's In Memoriam of the person 
" who breaks his birth's invidious bar " ; 
No Hindu can do that. When we say that 
the average Indian is pre-eminent among 
civilised mankind for the tenacity with 
which he clings to his traditional " way 
of life," his dharma or established order, we 



POLITICAL & SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 235 

cannot distinguish between the social and the 
religious influences that bring about this 
result. It is largely due to caste that the 
earning power of Indians is low, and their 
circumstances often embarrassed. The high 
caste man may not drive a plough or keep a 
shop ; caste and religion make it obligatory 
that he should marry a wife before he can 
support a family, that he should find a 
husband for his daughter before she is grown 
up. Caste may forbid him to kill plague- 
infected rats in his house, and religion may 
require him to use a polluted well. It has 
been proved beyond all reasonable doubt that 
the malarial fevers which afflict the wealthiest 
quarter of the city of Bombay, and are 
sapping the vitality of the Parsi community, 
could be suppressed if the wells in the 
courtyards of the houses, which serve as 
breeding places for mosquitoes, were closed. 
Yet this very necessary and obvious improve- 
ment is obstructed because it is said that the 
ritual worship of the Hindus and Parsis 
cannot be properly performed with filtered 
water from the city mains. 

The influences tending to keep the masses 
of the Indian population unprogressive and 
immobile and to check new movements of 
thought are very powerful. Are there any 
forces operating in the contrary direction ? 
We must seek them in the political system 



236 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

and institutions of British rule, in the inflow 
of western civilisation, in the opening up of 
the country and the quickening of industrial 
life by railways, in the establishment of 
modern industries by European capital, and 
in the more frequent intercourse of India with 
the outer world. It is to be expected that in 
a great continent like India these influences 
would operate very unequally. Such indeed 
is the case. Their effect has been greatest 
in the large towns, especially in the maritime 
capitals, and among the professional and 
literary classes. They have led to the " un- 
rest "of which unhappily so much has 
been heard during the last four years. 
The impression created by this " unrest " 
upon persons coming into contact with it 
for the first time is that the new forces 
have been too strong for the old social 
order and have fairly shattered it : re- 
ligious beliefs and caste restraints, morals, 
sobriety and discipline seem to have been 
swept away by the sudden flood. But the 
symptoms in their extreme form exist in a very 
limited area and among a small section of the 
population. "It is almost a misnomer to 
speak of Indian unrest," Mr. Valentine 
Chirol has remarked in his powerful and 
deeply interesting book, Indian Unrest. There 
are vast numbers of Hindus, he goes on 
to say, who are unaffected by it. " These 



POLITICAL & SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 237 

include almost all the Hindu ruling chiefs 
and landed aristocracy, as well as the great 
mass of the agricultural classes, which form 
in all parts of India the overwhelming majority 
of the population. Very large areas, moreover, 
are still entirely free from unrest, which, 
except for a few sporadic outbreaks in other 
districts, has been hitherto mainly confined 
to three distinct areas — ^the Mahratta Deccan, 
which comprises a great part of the Bombay 
presidency and several districts of the Central 
Provinces, Bengal with the new province of 
Eastern Bengal, and the Punjab. In these 
regions it is the large cities that have beeii 
the real hot-beds of unrest, and great as 
is their influence it must not be forgotten 
that in India scarcely one-tenth of the 
population lives in cities, or even in small 
townships with more than five thousand 
inhabitants." 

It is important to grasp the facts given in 
this passage as to the limited and localised 
character of Indian " unrest." They do not 
detract from its gravity where it exists. But 
they set it in its true perspective. They 
enable us to realise that there are vast tracts 
in the interior of the country where the 
disorders and crimes which have stained its 
course are absolutely unknown, and where 
less is heard or thought about them than in 
England. 



238 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

We may follow Mr. Chirol in his account of 
the evolution of the extreme forms of Hindu 
unrest. He traces its first beginnings to the 
licence of the Indian newspaper press in the 
Mahratta country, of which Poona is the 
capital. This press is to a great extent con- 
trolled by Brahmans, and from historical 
causes the Brahmans of the Deccan have not 
as a body been well disposed to British 
ascendancy. With the licence of the press 
various popular movements were associated, 
based on appeals to racial or religious senti- 
ments. Thus there was a movement against 
cow-killing which appealed to the religious 
feelings of the Hindu population and was 
directed equally against Muhammadans and 
Europeans. There was a movement to cele- 
brate the birthday of Sivaji, the hero of the 
Mahratta race, and commemorate his exploits, 
among which was the treacherous murder of 
the representative of the Mughal emperor. 
These and other movements were given a 
religious colour by being placed under the 
patronage of the popular elephant-headed god 
Ganesh, whose annual festival is kept in every 
village in the Deccan. Their general effect 
was to excite active disaffection and to revive 
dreams of a Mahratta supremacy under 
Brahmanic direction. It is not alleged that 
the persons who took part in these movements 
necessarily foresaw whither they would lead. 



POLITICAL & SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 239 

or were advocates of physical force. But it 
is certain that with some of the leaders hatred 
of the British was a dominant passion, and 
that they transmitted it to a circle of ardent 
adherents. 

In Bengal the direct causes of " unrest " 
were the partition of the province and the 
reform of the universities. It is outside the 
scope of this work to discuss the partition. 
Suffice to say, it was undertaken with the 
object of distributing between two govern- 
ments the task of ruling eighty-five millions 
of people, and of giving to the eastern half of 
the province its proper share of attention and 
of public money. The reform of the universi- 
ties was suspected as an attempt on the 
part of the government to control and 
curtail higher education and private educa- 
tional enterprise. To combat these measures 
the leaders of the advanced party in Bengal 
borrowed from the Bombay presidency 
methods of agitation which closely approxi- 
mated to those of physical force, and not 
unfrequently issued in the gravest crimes. 
Agitation in Bengal was given a religious 
sanction. It was placed under the protection 
of the goddess Kali. The youth of Bengal 
were exhorted to rally to the cause of the 
great " mother," whose land was being 
desecrated and whose heart was sore. Two 
words were invented, swaraj and swadeshi, 



240 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

which exerted and still exert by their very 
indefiniteness a great influence on the emo- 
tional and imaginative Bengali character. 
Swaraj means self-government and swadeshi 
national industries. The latter as applied in 
Bengal included not only the legitimate 
fostering of home industries but the boycott 
by physical violence of imported goods. 
Both these objects were enforced by re- 
ligious oaths, penances and ritual, and were 
advocated in the name of Kali. In Bengal 
as in Bombay a movement which originally 
started in discussion and in what may 
be called a constitutional manner passed 
into violent acts, outrages and diabolical 
crimes. 

In the Punjab unrest in its extreme form 
had a very short life. There were riots at 
Rawalpindi and Lahore, which were promptly 
suppressed and were followed by the deporta- 
tion of prominent leaders. The movement 
had a different origin from those of Bombay 
and Bengal and in many respects is deserving 
of sympathy. It arose from the doctrines 
preached in the Punjab by a religious reformer, 
Swami Dayanund (died 1883), and from 
the activities of the Arya Somaj, the sect 
founded by him. In the section on Religions 
an account has been given of the tenets of 
this society. It aims at purifying Hinduism 
and restoring the beliefs and practices of the 



POLITICAL & SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 241 

Vedic age. But the central doctrine " Arya 
for the Aryans " can readily be pushed to 
the point where it is inconsistent with 
acquiescence with British rule. It has the 
same effect on impulsive youth as the appeal 
in Bengal to the outraged feelings of the 
" mother goddess " or the " motherland." 
The disturbances in the Punjab were organised 
and led by members of the Arya Somaj, 
and the society has been accused of propa- 
gating active disaffection through its mission- 
aries. Recently it has sought to clear itself 
with the government of the Punjab, and has 
given assurances that its aims are constitu- 
tional and its teaching confined to social 
and religious reform. Its centres are at 
Lahore and other large towns of the Punjab, 
and its adherents belong mainly to the 
professional and official classes. M. Joseph 
Chailley, while conceding its claim to be 
a reforming movement on the religious 
side, asserts that " it is really fanatical and 
obscurantist." 

Reviewing these three extreme manifesta- 
tions of unrest Mr. Chirol observes that 
the forces which underlie them have a common 
source. " They are the dominant forces of 
Hinduism — forces which go to the very root 
of a social and religious system than which 
none in the history of the human race has 
shown greater vitality and stability." The 



242 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

movement is in fact a social and religious 
revival of Hinduism. Within legitimate limits 
it is a movement with which well-wishers 
of India may sympathise. In its extreme 
forms it is retrograde and allied with bigotry 
and superstition. " We have," Sir Alfred 
Lyall remarked in his introduction to Mr. 
Chirol's book, " the strange spectacle in 
certain parts of India of a party capable of 
resorting to methods which are both 
reactionary and revolutionary, of men who 
offer prayers and sacrifices to ferocious 
divinities and denounce the Government by 
seditious journalism, preaching primitive 
superstition in the very modern form of 
leading articles." 

Probably at no time had the physical force 
movement the weight of educated Hindu 
opinion, even in the centres of unrest, on its 
side ; though for a while the moderates were 
overborne by the advocates of violence or 
thought it prudent to acquiesce in acts which 
they did not approve. To-day the moderates 
are in possession of the field, and the extreme 
party is discredited and its real weakness in 
members and ability is revealed. Many 
factors have contributed to this result, not 
the least powerful being the new legislative 
councils and the measures taken for liberalising 
the constitution of the Indian government. 
The extreme claims of Hinduism have led to 



POLITICAL & SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 243 

counter claims on the part of the Muhamma- 
dans, and the wiser heads on both sides 
perceive that in a modern state there is no 
room for extreme religious pretensions. The 
idea of a return to Brahmanic supremacy 
and of an exclusively Hindu society is too 
opposed to the existing conditions of India 
to stand examination. It appears to have 
been quietly dropped by responsible political 
leaders along with other excesses of the period 
of violence. 

Opinions naturally differ as to the causes of 
the passionate outbreak of hostility to British 
rule. Those who assign it primarily to the 
licence of the press attribute the state of the 
Indian newspaper press to a mistaken policy 
of higher education. " The rapid expansion 
of an educational system that has developed 
far in excess of the immediate purpose for 
which it was originally introduced, was 
bound to result in a great deal of disappoint- 
ment for the vast number of Indians who 
regarded it merely as an avenue to govern- 
ment employ." Mr. Chirol adds : " Things 
have in fact reached this pitch that our 
educational system is now turning out year 
by year a semi-educated proletariat which is 
not only unemployed, but in many cases 
almost unemployable." Different views may 
be held both as to the extent of this over- 
production of matriculated students, and as 



244 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

to its bearing on disaffection. But there is 
no difference of opinion among thoughtful 
Indians as to the serious defects of the col- 
legiate and university system, and as to the 
necessity for radical improvements. In this 
work the co-operation of Indians and Euro- 
peans is assured. 

Mention may now be made of some of the 
constitutional and legitimate movements 
that are to be found in present-day India. 
The Indian National Congress claims the 
first place. It was founded about twenty- 
five years ago. Its object was to bring 
together in an annual assembly the leaders 
of Indian liberalism, irrespective of race and 
creed, for the discussion of political and 
social reforms and for formulating recom- 
mendations for the consideration of the 
Indian government. Originally it attracted 
the support of not a few Parsis and some 
Muhammadans. But gradually most of the 
Muhammadans dropped out, the Parsis have 
lost much of their authority, and the Congress 
is now predominantly Hindu. Its members 
consist mostly of lawyers, doctors, school- 
masters, journalists. They are not returned 
by any definite constituent bodies, or by any 
formal process of election. They represent 
primarily themselves, and indirectly and in a 
general way the political ideas of the liberal 
and advanced sections of the Hindu pro- 



POLITICAL & SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 245 

fessional classes. The Congress has often 
been ridiculed by its enemies for assuming 
the title of " national " and for taking itself 
seriously as a " parliament." It is vulnerable 
in these respects. But undoubtedly it has 
acted as a centre and rallying point for Hindu 
politicians, it has drawn public men together 
from all parts of India and it has fashioned 
the habit of conferences and congresses. Of 
late years its existence has not been harmoni- 
ous. Dissensions between the extremists and 
the moderates have interrupted its proceedings 
on several occasions, and in 1907 the 
meeting at Surat ended in riot and con- 
fusion. The enlarged legislative councils and 
other constitutional reforms have now 
diminished its importance, and there seems 
a disposition to regard it as having fulfilled 
its utility. 

As the National Congress is the con- 
stitutional organ of progressive Hinduism, so 
the All-India Moslem League represents the 
political aspirations of the educated Muham- 
madan community in India. As its name 
implies, its activities extend throughout India. 
It has provincial branches, and also a branch 
in England. It was formed in 1906, in the 
early days of the political excitements gene- 
rated by the partition of Bengal, and 
represented the natural anxiety of the Muham- 
madan community to secure a full hearing 



246 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

for their political claims. Rightly or wrongly 
their leaders believed that any system of 
popular representation which did not make 
special provision for the Muhammadans as 
a separate community would be injurious 
to their interests. When the scheme for 
enlarging the legislative councils and intro- 
ducing the elective element was proposed, this 
became a burning question. In the end 
considerable concessions were made to the 
Muhammadans, and they admit that they 
have secured adequate representation on the 
councils. The Moslem League has a large 
and varied programme at the annual meetings. 
The League seeks to secure separate represen- 
tation for Muhammadans on district and 
municipal boards : to obtain a larger share 
of public offices ; and to promote the special 
interests of the community wherever they 
are affected. It is too early to see how this 
new movement, which is necessarily sectarian 
in its aims, will shape. But the struggle over 
the constitutional question has undoubtedly 
quickened the corporate feelings of Indian 
Muhammadans. A Muhammadan university 
in India has long been the desire of their 
leaders. They have never been satisfied with 
a system of secular education from which the 
religious element is sedulously excluded. 
The Muhammadan college at Aligarh was 
established in response to this feeling more 



POLITICAL & SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 247 

than thirty years ago by a very enlightened 
man, Sir Syad Ahmad Khan. It has pros- 
pered exceedingly, and it has within it the 
germs of a teaching university. But the 
jump from a single college affiliated to the 
provincial university to a self-contained 
Muhammadan university is necessarily a very 
big one, and a few years ago any such project 
seemed impossible of realisation. Under the 
quickening influence of the new political life of 
India the Moslem community have now raised 
a considerable endowment fund, and have laid 
a comprehensive scheme before the Indian 
Government for a Muhammadan teaching 
university at Aligarh. It is a remarkable 
instance of public-spirited corporate action, 
and it illustrates the change that has come 
over modern India. There is no need to fear 
that the proposed university will run on 
narrow theological lines. It will start with 
the traditions of the Aligarh college behind it, 
and these have been consistently as liberal 
and enlightened as the mind of the great 
founder, a man worthy to rank with William 
of Wykeham and other venerated benefactors 
of our English and Scottish universities. 

The National Congress in its origin con- 
templated social as well as political reform. 
But social reform has now been taken over by 
another body called the Indian National 
Social Conference, which holds an annual 



248 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

meeting and in constitution and members 
closely resembles the National Congress. 
Like the latter it is predominantly Hindu. 
M. Chailley thus describes its programme : 
" It includes on the social side the right to 
undertake distant voyages, suppression of 
child marriage (to which some would add 
that of elderly widowers with sons), the remar- 
riage of widows, temperance, and morality. 
On the economic side it seeks training for 
industrial and commercial careers, and to 
attract capital and energy to the continuous 
development of national wealth, politics 
remaining definitely in the background. On 
the religious side it advocates fidelity 
to a Hinduism freed from the pagan scum 
that has come up to its surface ; it 
desires no conversions to any form of 
Christianity." 

This programme, with additions and 
variations, is repeated annually at provincial 
conferences. The number of these conferences 
is amazing. There are industrial conferences, 
temperance conferences, Parsi conferences, 
Jain conferences, Moslem and Hindu educa- 
tional conferences, and many others. As the 
golf habit has fastened upon middle-aged and 
elderly persons in England, so the conference- 
going habit has settled on the educated Indian 
community. As a form of recreation the con- 
ference is not without its merits in an eastern 



POLITICAL & SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 249 

climate. But there is no trifling at these 
gatherings. Intense seriousness pervades 
them. The speeches often show signs of 
careful preparation and extensive reading, 
and occasionally rise to a high level of 
eloquence. It is sometimes said that in these 
conferences theory is in advance of practice, 
and that discourse fails to result in action. 
But this is a common defect of conferences 
all the world over. A juster observation is 
that the Indian mind in these discussions 
is seen moving among unfamiliar ideas. For 
centuries it has played with metaphysical 
speculations, with the riddles of spirit and 
matter, existence and non-existence. It is 
without experience of the problems with 
which the modern state is engrossed, the 
political, social, and industrial problems which 
are the every-day fare of our members of 
Parliament and municipal councillors. In 
time the acute and subtle Indian intellect 
will accommodate itself to the new order 
of ideas and will move freely among them. 
It will accumulate practical experiences, and 
deal with the concrete problems of civic life 
on the basis of ascertained and accepted facts. 
The conference as an institution will then 
have greater actuality. At present it rather 
tends to be a dialectical exercise. 

The impression that this account of social 
and political movements in India is calculated ^ 



250 PEOPLES & PROBLEMS OF INDIA 

to create is that the country must be in a stage 
of rapid transformation, and the people in a 
state of intellectual tension. But the move- 
ment is confined to the educated classes of the 
towns, and mainly to the small fraction of 
the population that reads and speaks English. 
Out of three hundred and fifteen millions of 
inhabitants little more than one million have 
this knowledge. Nine-tenths of the popula- 
tion live in villages and pursue a stolid 
conservative agriculture. The members of 
the numerous conferences and congresses that 
sit at the provincial capitals at stated intervals 
are drawn from a very small body, and the 
same faces appear at the different meetings. 
There are thousands of villages in which no 
one takes in a vernacular newspaper. These 
old-world communities are little affected by 
the movements of city folk. They know 
nothing of popular representation, ballot- 
boxes, legislative councils, national congresses 
and other matters in which the lawyer and the 
j ournalist delight. They have a very moderate 
goodwill for the village school, to the inmates 
of which they contribute under considerable 
pressure a small percentage of their children. 
Their enthusiasm is reserved for the new temple 
with its four-handed figure of Vishnu which 
some wealthy grain-dealer is erecting as a 
thank-offering for a son, or for the delights of 
the annual pilgrimage to the sacred bathing- 



POLITICAL & SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 251 

pool where the footprint of the god is clearly 
stamped on the rocks. They submit to 
vaccination because it is prescribed ; but they 
have greater faith in the efficacy of oblations 
to the goddess of small-pox. They hate social 
reform, which on its sanitary side is connected 
with taxes, fines and inspections, and on its 
ethical side involves breaches of caste-law and 
disrespect for tradition. Doubtless even the 
Indian village is changing and will change 
still more under the pressure of ideas from 
outside and of new necessities and desires. 
But the change will be very gradual. For 
many years the crust of custom will rest 
heavily upon its inhabitants, and they will 
resent being called upon to step out of their 
established order, their ancient way of life. 
" We have now," said Lord Morley, in an 
illuminating phrase in one of his speeches in 
the House of Lords on the Indian Councils 
bill, "as it were before us in that vast 
congeries of peoples we call India, a long 
slow march in uneven stages through all the 
centuries from the fifth to the twentieth." 
The more the continent is studied through- 
out its length and breadth, the more clearly 
will the essential truth of this picture be 
realised. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



CHAPTER I 

The Indian Empire : being volumes i. to iv. of the new editiou 
of the Imperial Gazetteer of India, 1907. (These volumes 
take the place of The Indian Empire i Its Peoples, 
History and Produds, which Sir W. W. Hunter brought 
out in 1893, in connection with the first edition of the 
Imperial Gazetteer. The four volumes are entitled re- 
spectively, " Descriptive," " Historical," " Economic," 
and " Administrative." They may be consulted for all 
sections of the present work.) 

HoLDicH, Sib T. — The Gates of India. 1910. 

Huntingdon, E. — The Pulse of Asia. 1907. 

CHAPTER II 

Elphinstone, MouiirrsTTTAiiT. — The History of India. 9th 

edition. 1905. 
Hunter, Sm W. W. — Brief History of the Indian Peoples. 

23rd edition. 1903. 
Smith, V. k.~Early History of India. 1904. The Oxford 

Student's History of India. 1908. Asoka. 1909. 
Lane-Poolb, S. — Medicevai India, 1903. ("Story of the 

Nations " series.) 
Lyail, Sib A. C. — British Dominion in India. 4th edition. 

1907. Warren Hastings. 1889. (" English Men of 

Action " series.) 
DuTT, R. C. — Histwy of Civilisation in Ancient India. 1899. 
The Rulers of India. A series of 27 volumes, edited by Sir 

W. W. Hunter. The volumes on " Babar," " Akbar," 

" Aurangzib," " Ranjet Smgh," " The Earl of Mayo," 

*' The Marquess of Dalhousie," cover critical epochs. 

CHAPTERS III AND IV 

RiSLEY, Sib H. H. — The People of India. 1908. 

Cbookb, W. — The Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern 

India. 1896. Natives of Northern India. 1907. 

(" The Native Races of the British Empire " series.) 

\Oman, J. Q.— -Cults, Customs, and Superstitions of India, 1908. 

253 



254. BIBLIOGRAPHY 

CHAPTER V 

Lyall, Sib A. C. — Asiatic Studies. 1899. 
Macdonnell, a. a. — A History of Sanskrit Literature. 1900. 
Hopkins, E. W.—The Religions of India. 1896. 
Williams, Sib Monier. — Brdhmanism and Hinduism. 1887. 
Davids, T. W. Rhys. — Buddhism. 1903. Buddhist India, 
1903. (" Story of the Nations " series.) 

CHAPTER VI 

MoRisoN, Sib Theodore. — Indian Industrial Organisation. 

1906. The JiJconomic Transition in India. 1911. 
Dftt, R. C. — The Economic History of British India. 1902. 

The Economic History of India in the Victorian Age, 1906. 

CHAPTER VII 

Ilbebt, Sir C. P. — The Government of India. 1907. 
Strachey, Sir J. — India, its Administration and Progress, 

4th edition. 1911. 
Baden-Powell, B. H. — Land Revenue and Tenure in British 

India, 2nd edition. 1907. 

CHAPTER VIII 

Lee- Warner, Sir William. — The Native States of India, 

1911. The Life of the Marquis of Dodhousie, 1904. 
Tuppeb, Sir C. L. — Our Indian Protectorate, 1893. 

CHAPTER IX 

Chaillby, M. Joseph. — Administrative Problems of British 

India. 1910. 
Hunter, Sir W. W.~The India of the Queen. 1903. 
Raleigh, Sir T. — Lord Curzon in India. 1906, 
MoRLBY, Viscount. — Indian Speeches, 1909, 

CHAPTER XI 

Chirol, V. — Indian Unrest. 1910. 

Eraser, L. — India under Curzon and After, 1911. 

James, H. R. — Education and Statesmanship in India. 1911. 

India and the Durbar : being a reprint of the Indian articles 

in The Times of May 24, 1911. 
Fuller, Sir B. — Studies in Indian Life and Sentiment, 1910, 
Townsend, M. — Asia and Europe. 1905. 
Macdonald, J, R. — The Awakening of India, 1910. 



INDEX 



Afghanistan, 17, 212 
Akbar, 54 

Aryan race, 9, 36-40, 69 
Arya Somaj, 122, 241 
As oka, 42 
Aurangzeb, 65 

Babar, 52, 132 

Baroda, 200 

Bheels, 74 

Bengal, 14, 27, 34 

Bikanir, 29 

Brahmanism, 45, 98 

Brahmaputra, 19, 21, 27 

Brahmo Samaj, 122 

" British India," 33, 181 

Buddhism, 124 

Burma, 15, 17, 28, 34, 126 

Canals, 11, 214 
Caste, 39, 86-105, 234 
Central India, 29 
Chota Nagpur, 28 

Deccan, 30 

Delhi, 26 

" Depressed Classes," 102 

Dravidian race, 33, 70 

East India Company, 57 
Education, 83-85, 224 

Famines, 150-152 



Gandhara sculptures, 44 
Ganges, 26 
Ghats, The, 30 
Godaveri, 31 
Gupta empire, 45 
Gwalior, 191 

Himalaya, 10-11, 18-23 
Hinduism, 108 
Hindustan, 26 
Hyderabad, 32, 190 

India : derivation, 9 ; descrip- 
tion, 14-34 ; history, 35-64 ; 
races, 69-72 ; languages, 
78-79; religions, 106-135; 
agriculture, 139 ; popula- 
tion, 153 ; " double govern- 
ment " system, 161 ; present 
system, 164-180 ; provinces, 
169; army, 210 

Indore, 191 

Indus, 10, 19, 21, 24 

Industries, 215 

Jainism, 124 
Jaipur, 184 
Jaisulmir, 29 
Jodhpur, 29 
Jats, 97 
Jumna, 26 

Kashmir, 6, 193 



255 



256 



INDEX 



Land Revenue, 176, 217 
Laws and Law Courts, 178- 

179 
Legislative Councils, 165-167 
Lingayats, 102, 121 

Mahabharata, 40 
Mahrattas, 31, 56, 97 
Malabar, 14, 32 
Manu, 87 

Mughal empire, 53 
Monsoon, 12-13 
Moslem League, 245 
Muhammadanism, 49, 76-78 
Mysore, 32, 187, 201 

Native states, 33, 181-206 
National Congress, 246 
Nepal, 16 

Opium revenue, 228 

Pitt's Act of 1784, 161 
Plague, 222 
Plassey, 36, 58 

Proclamation, Queen Victoria's, 
64 ; King Edward's, 64 



Rajputana, 29 
Rajputs, 48, 74, 94-97 
Ramayana, 40, 114 
Reform : constitutional, 167, 

231 ; social, 246 ; sanitary, 

220 ; religious, 122 

Salt duty, 227 
Santals, 28 
Sikhs, 61, 123 
Siva, 11 
Slave kings, 51 
Sutlej, 38 

Tanjore, 32 
Tibet, 19-20 
Travancore, 32, 188 



Universities, 225, 244 
" Unrest," 236-242 



Vedic writings, 39, 110-113 
Vindhyas, 29 
Vishnu, 118 



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